The Long Conversation of Friendship

Yesterday I was reading some of Phillip Lopate's essays from his collection Against Joie de Vivre. His essay about essays, "What Happened to the Personal Essay?" grated on my nerves a bit, mostly cause he's a little too critical of my man E.B., but mostly I really admire his style. He even manages to find deeper meaning in shaving off his beard. I dig it.

The excerpts below (all emphasis is mine) are from Lopate's essay, "Modern Friendships," and it's one of those essays that I keep flipping back to and reading again. Maybe because I've been thinking about friendship a lot lately, and more specifically, how to maintain friendships. I guess I used to think it would be easier as I got older. Turns out, it's not. It can be downright tricky, as a matter of fact. Like Lopate writes, "Though it is often said that with a true friend there is no need to hold anything back ... Certain words maybe be too cruel if spoken at the wrong moment ... I also find with each friend, as they must with me, that some initial resistance, restlessness, psychic weather must be overcome before that tender ideal attentiveness may be called forth."

Here are more of Lopate's thoughts on friendship, what he describes as "a long conversation":

"Since we cannot be polygamists in our conjugal life, at least we can do so with friendship. As it happens, the harem of friends, so tantalizing a notion, often translates into feeling pulled in a dozen different directions, with the guilty sense of having disappointed everyone a little. It is also a risky, contrived enterprise to try to make one's friends behave in a friendly manner toward each other: if the effort fails one feels obliged to mediate; if it succeeds too well, one is jealous."

"When I think about the qualities that characterize the best friendships I've known, I can identify five: rapport, affection, need, habit, and forgiveness. Rapport and affection can only take you so far; they may leave you at the formal , outer gate of goodwill, which is still not friendship. A persistent need for the other's company, for their interest, approval, opinion, will get you inside the gates, especially when it is reciprocated. In the end, however, there are no substitutes for habit and forgiveness. A friendship may travel for years on cozy habit. But it is a melancholy fact that unless you are a saint you are bound to offend every friend deeply at least once in the course of time. The friends I have kept the longest are those who forgave me for wronging them, unintentionally, intentionally, or by the plain catastrophe of my personality, time and again. There can be no friendship without forgiveness." 

African Violet On My Windowsill

You gave me an African violet.
Two years ago, you did. And I crammed it
in the front seat of my Neon, with the rest of
my life in the back. The U-Haul followed as I
drove in the 90 degree heat up to Chicago.

Mufasa & Layla kept meowing as if
I were driving them to their deaths.
But it was only to Chicago.

I wedged the flower between my seats and I
prayed it would not tumble to the floor.
Each turn, I held my hand out to protect it,
this little thing. An African violet
potted in an old record. You put our friendship,
what was left, what could remain, in that soil.
I thought. This record someone--you?--must have
molded, and worked, into the shape
of a makeshift pot.

Each time you'd send me a new mixtape I'd
put it on the stereo as I cleaned my apartment,
alone. Then, I knew our friendship was still ours,
and ours alone. We were safe.

When I arrived at my brand new old apartment
in Chicago, I placed the African violet
on my windowsill. That night I read Love is a Mixtape
and I thought of you, and your loss. How I
wanted to take your hurt and squeeze it,
soothe it, make you not feel broken by it
anymore. If you did. But I couldn't save you
from your heartbreak any more than
you could stop me from mine, could I?

Later, much later, I loaned you the book and I
sensed your hesitation. But I know and you know that
our losses are ours alone. Still, I kept hoping you'd
read it. Now the book is gone, somewhere, left hanging
between us. Like our friendship we also can't seem to
return.

My African violet stayed on my windowsill, and I
took comfort in it for that short time it was. Happy
you knew me well enough to understand:
It was the most completely perfect parting gift.
One day I walked in the kitchen. Both cats were
eating the African violet, gnawing and swatting at it.
I yelled in horror, and in their fright, they jumped
off the windowsill. Taking our African violet
with them.

The record bounced slightly, and soil spilled
over my kitchen floor.

Old Friends

Today I visited my oldest and dearest friend Eileen. We hadn’t seen each other since this summer, only about a month after her baby, Eli, was born. It seems silly, considering we only live about an hour apart—she lives in Aurora, I live in the city—but sometimes life just gets in the way of getting together. (That and the fact that until recently, I worked in a bar and she has a normal human being’s schedule.)

Eileen and I first met standing in line to go outside for recess in elementary school. We had the exact same coat. It was destiny.

Although sometimes we go six months without seeing each other, it doesn’t really matter. Not that I wouldn’t love to see her more often, of course I would. But it really doesn’t matter because, like we talked about tonight, we’ve known each for so long, and we know each other so well, that we can always pick up a conversation like we just saw each other yesterday. Plus, we laugh our asses off every time we’re together. What’s so funny, I’m not really sure. But it’s pretty damn terrific.

One of Eileen’s greatest qualities is how she makes everyone around her feel happy. You can see that just by being around her and her wonderful husband Aron, or the way her son’s eyes light up every time she looks at him. She always, always, always, looks for a positive note in everything in life. It’s therapeutic for me to be around her. I seriously drove the entire ride home with a big ass grin on my face.

And there’s really something to be said for being around a friend who, when I talk about my mom, not only knew her and understands what I’m saying, but gets a little teary eyed because she loved her too. Our moms were friends, too. My dad is still friends with hers. You get what I mean. She’s family.

I hope everyone has an Eileen in their lives.

Love ya, Bean.