Friends

(above: a woman outside a Montreal cafe)

Over the past weekend, my best childhood friend and her husband were with us for a visit. L. and I have stayed in touch and seen each other a number of times, but we haven't spent this much concentrated time together since, well, probably since leaving our little home town for college. She became a lawyer, raised two children, and served several terms as elected first selectman (essentially the mayor) of a small New England town, all of which I admire a great deal.

We've both changed in some ways, I guess, but the pattern for who we'd become was pretty clear, when I think back, and our personalities have grown and deepened but don't seem altered in any essential way. L. was from a big Irish Catholic family, and I was an only child, living in a big house with four adults, around the block on the way to school. She and I walked to school together every day for twelve years, accompanied for much of that by two of her sisters, then just one, as they got older and graduated. We played together after school and on weekends, learned to sew and knit for our dolls and then for ourselves, sewing lots of projects on her mom's old black treadle Singer or my grandmother's only slightly-newer electric one. There were swimming lessons on cold June mornings and skating and sledding in the winter, and countless hours of making "messes" in our kitchen, under my mother's indulgent eyes. L. was a reader and very good student who finished second in her class, one year ahead of me. Her parents both died before mine, and when my mother also died, and L. came for the funeral  of her "second mom," I realized that her presence, her quiet support, and our shared memories mattered to me even more than I'd known - and that this was true for her too. 

So when she called and suggested a spontaneous get-together in Montreal, we jumped at the chance. After they arrived we went to the market and bought food, came home and cooked together, drank wine, talked about our families, about knitting and politics and religion, about working on old houses and building new ones. Our husbands, both quieter and less social than we are, looked at us indulgently: would we ever stop talking? We toured the city on bikes (they're avid road-bikers) and on foot, getting wet and cold and laughing about it, and feeling grateful we were all still resistant to the idea of being stodgy adults; that eventuality - which has certainly come to many of my friends with age - doesn't look very likely in this case.

It was such a pleasure to open a  little window for them on our new life in the city. On Sunday morning D. took off on a long solo bike ride and ended up on top of Mont Royal, while L. and J. sat in church together and I sang in the choir. It was Remembrance Day with all of Montreal's Grenadier Guards in attendance, the bishop preaching, and a video cameraman ranging around the church - at one point he actually climbed up into the pulpit, leaving some of the older parishioners aghast -- so she had quite an experience of Montreal Anglican tradition. For the flip side of Quebec "religious" culture, that evening we walked to Dieu du Ciel, a microbrasserie/brewpub on Laurier West where the names of many of the beers are puns or take-offs on religious terms*, and drank pints that ranged from J.'s blonde to D.'s molasses-colored stout. Then, discovering that the Mexican restaurant we hoped to eat at was closed on Sundays, we walked back down St. Denis, debating the many choices before finally settling on a meal of delicious buckwheat Breton crepes. We spent Monday in the Old City, wandering around the galleries and shops, and then took a tour of Notre Dame Basilica before coming home to a dinner of J.'s wonderful homemade pizza.

It's such a cliche to talk about old friends "picking up as if no time had gone by"; that's true, but I think we both realize there's more to friendship than feeling comfortable together. Lots of kids fall out with each other during their school years, but we never did, and that must have been both because of loyalty and actual compatibility and interest in each other. I don't ever remember fighting with L., or even any particular tension. During the intervening years of college and raising kids and building professions we really didn't talk that much; just stayed in touch at Christmas and around the times of our birthdays. It's now, as we get closer to 60, with children grown and three of our four parents buried, that the shared memories seem so precious, and the friendship sustaining in new ways. I think I thought for a long while that L's big family, which has stayed very tight and close, was plenty for her, and that our friendship was real but maybe not all that important anymore. Probably that's the insecurity of an only child who's had to make peace with diminishing family as the years have gone by, and the need to be emotionally self-sufficient - I've always felt both vulnerable and determined in that way. And, as a smart and talented girl in a conservative, poor rural town, I think I never quite trusted a lot of my friendships from back then - with good reason; the resentments, exclusions, and back-stabbing seemed more real, though there was no reason to extend that to L. What I see now is that along with the compatibility we always shared, and the irreplaceability of the friendship itself, we're curious about each other in new ways, wanting to know what we've each learned from life so far, and to be there for each other in the future.

I looked over at her, one of the evenings as we were talking, noticing the way her long blonde hair had gone beautifully grey, and remembered a photo in the yearbook of L. in her prom dress - which we may have cut out and sewn together, I don't remember - smiling just the way she was smiling at that moment: a characteristic combination of sweetness, intelligence, mischief and exuberance. She's still beautiful, though it's forty years later, and more important, she's still herself. I've lived long enough to know how rare that is.

*Grande noirceur (Deep darkness), for instance, is an Imperial stout with 9% alcohol content; "The name of this beer refers to the Prime minister Duplessis political era (1945-1960) when the Quebec government was under the strong influence of the church and willingly kept the inhabitants into ignorance and away from progress."

Comments

[pohanginapete]

Thoughtful and beautifully written, Beth. I have similarly close friends but none going back to my school days. Nevertheless, when you wrote, "...there's more to friendship than feeling comfortable together," I realised the truth of it.

[zuleme]

There is nothing like the people who have known you since you were a child. The older you get the more you understand it. I had a gang of four and two are dead, one by suicide when we were teenagers. A few years ago I found one friend by searching the net. We got together with the third, the last time I saw her. Those roots go deep.
I wouldn't mind in the least spending more time with my last remaining friend from my childhood in our home town as we get older. I hope it happens.

[Teresa]

What a poignant post. It made me realize again how fragile and easily lost such friendships are. One has to keep track, not take it for granted. It is too soon over.

Thanks for this.

FA

[Mouse]

How lovely! Friends are a true treasure and a gift to be cherished

[Pat]

I missed my 40th high school reunion this summer. Actually, I haven't attended any of our reunions - though I always buy "the book." Some of these people go back to first grade with me.

Last night, I dreamed of a reunion. It was in the living room of my best friend's house. And I had a wonderful time! Thank you for stirring all that up. I am still smiling.

[Robb]

Kia ora Beth,
This is such a beautiful tribute to real friendship, to L., and to you. As so often happens here for me I feel a certain synchronicity. So many friendships I left behind, some have withered on the vine, others have blossomed, mostly those whose roots were already deep and able to withstand lack of nourishment at times. I don't think you can under estimate the importance of those Quiet Hellos at Christmas or birthdays.To reconnect and as you write, "find she's still herself", says so much about you as well Beth. This has made my day. Cheers.
Aroha,
Robb