Encyclopedia of Me Monday: F is for Friends

As an only child, I take my friendships pretty seriously. My closest friends become the siblings I will never have, and so I'm grateful for their willingness to share life's vicissitudes with me.Unlike siblings, however, friendships tend to come and go, don't they? Right now, I have a core group of three or four "fristers," women I have been through the fire with in one way or another, and women I know I can hail when the flames start licking at my feet. But, twenty years ago, my inner circle was comprised of completely different women. For various reasons, these women have disappeared from my life. With one exception, my best friends right now are all significantly older than I. With no exceptions, my relationship with each one developed through music, and each one I considered a mentor before I considered them a friend. Sometimes I wonder what that says about me. Often, I feel that I get more than I give from our relationships. These women are strong, independent, and talented. And, for some reason, they have swooped me under their wing, nurtured my talents, and encouraged me to cultivate my abilities. How lucky am I? My friend Leigh, at 41 years of age, the youngest of my BFF's, recently gave birth to her second child. When she told me she was pregnant, she said, "I kept thinking about what you once told me -that one of your biggest regrets in life was having only one child. And I thought I'd better do something about that before it was too late for me."Wow. That was pretty huge for me, to think that my experience could have made such an impact on another woman's life. Reflecting on that, and on all that I've gained from my relationships with each of these women, I feel humbled by the power of friendship, of what we can give to each other, often without even realizing it. And I also feel a little frightened, knowing that sometimes friendships are vulnerable to loss for all kinds of reasons. Time, distance, illness - all of these can stretch the bonds of friendships, until they eventually break and fade away.

As I age, my hope is to one day influence the life of a younger woman in the way my friends have influenced me - to be a source of inspiration as well as companionship, an educator as well as a buddy, someone to respect and admire as well as someone to gossip and giggle with.

Friends. A good entry to have in the Encyclopedia of Me.

Sunday Scribblings-Collector

A few years ago, my handbell group did a concert in northern Michigan. Our host for the event invited us to a reception at his home, a lovely old farmhouse overlooking one of the lakes. Inside, he proudly took us on a tour of his massive collection of fruit jars. Over 800 of them, each one individually displayed in custom built shelving that surrounded the walls in nearly every room, each one lovingly labeled with its name, date of origin, and place of purchase, some of them dating back as far as pre-Civil War times. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of fruit jars, or that people collected them with such fervor - there are apparently nation wide collectors conferences, swap meets, and contests. Who knew?Personally, I'm a haphazard collector, at best. Early in my married life, I desultorily collected teapots, and then toyed with the idea of collecting antique sugar bowls and cream pitchers. I received a few pieces of Waterford crystal as wedding gifts, but the cost prohibited me from collecting many more. I guess I get bored with things after a while - they lose their luster rather quickly, especially the kinds of things I have to dust! I could never in a million years muster the enthusiasm to collect nearly 1000 fruit jars. Truthfully, the older I get, the less interested I am in "things" of any kind. With the exception of books (which I suppose I've been collecting since I could toddle into the bookstore), I have little interest in material possessions anymore.

However, I am passionate about collecting experiences. Like the feeling of euphoria after a good performance, or the magical feeling I get when the perfect words seem to flow from my fingertips. Sharing a special meal with family and friends, or Jim and I laughing until we cry at some cute trick the dogs are doing. Walking through the park on a cool, fall evening, or driving down a country road with the wind blowing in my hair. Sleeping late on a rainy morning, curling up with a good book on a chilly night.

And, like most collectors, I'm searching for some particularly rare and precious moments to add to my collection. A month spent in the French countryside, a novel completed and published, a newborn grand-baby to hold in my arms.

Perhaps I'm not such a haphazard collector after all. Even though my collection can't be displayed on a shelf or catalogued in a computer file, it can't be bought by the highest bidder, or win any blue ribboned prize, it will live in my memory and heart for all time.

What could be more valuable than that?

Flavors of Fall

I could get used to this. Fall, I mean. Every year, I forget how much I adore it, until it sweeps down upon me, bruising the sky with purplish clouds, sweeping the air clean with stiff, chilled breezes, painting the landscape with brilliant reds and golds.

Yesterday morning, a fall preview arrived somewhat unexpectedly, sending me rummaging through the storage closet in my basement searching for favorite jeans and fuzzy sweaters, inspiring me to pull out the remnants of my faded summer flowers and drive to the market for big baskets of mums, their russet and purple blossoms the jewel tones of the season. Apple cider was on my mind, hot and spicy, a cinnamon stick set jauntily within the cup for an added burst of flavor.

My friend Pat loves fall more than anyone I know. Every October, she gets in her car and heads out on a "leaf chasing mission," which usually takes her into Western Michigan, Southern Ohio, and the Amish country of Indiana. These trips "feed her soul," she says, as she travels winding back roads admiring the splendor of God's palette covering the trees and hills.

Fall refreshes me, this beauteous bridge between the green easiness of summer and the grey freezes of winter. But as much as I love it, as much as it energizes me and lifts my spirits, I'm mindful of the loss inherent in this season. Winter's coming, and I know this last burst of beauty has to sustain me through the endless grey days ahead.

But today, with the sunshine still warm on my head and the breeze refreshingly cool on my face, a pot of chili simmering on the stove and brownies baking in the oven, I'm just loving the feel of fall, wishing this season could last a long time.

Yes, I could definitely get used to this.

Comfort Reading

Booking Through Thursday asks: Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better. What do you read? (Any bets on how quickly somebody says the Bible or some other religious text? A good choice, to be sure, but to be honest, I was thinking more along the lines of fiction…. Unless I laid it on a little strong in the string of catastrophes? Maybe I should have just stuck to catching a cold on a rainy day...) Reading comforts me. Holding a book in my hands comforts me. Losing myself in the imaginary lives of others removes me from the daily aches and pains of my own life. When I was very small, I often awoke in the night with asthma attacks, and my grandmother would nestle on the couch and read to me, the vaporizer puffing clouds of steam around our heads. So for a very long time now, reading has served as comforter in times of stress.

But what would it take to get through the griefs piled upon that poor hapless person in the example above? I don't know if even books could help me in that scenario. But if they could, they would have to be giant books full of interesting characters...books like Julia Glass' The Whole World Over, or Penny Vincenzi's Into Tempation.

Or maybe tightly written, atmospheric mysteries~anything by Elizabeth George comes to mind. And certainly the dilemma's faced by any of Jodi Picoult's characters could distract me from my own.

These are the kinds of books I love whatever is going on in my life, books with richly drawn characters facing real life situations, characters toting lots of emotional baggage and working their way through the inticacies of personal relationships and life in general.

Comfort books.

Remembering

It would be wrong, I think, to let this day go by without stopping for a moment to remember and reflect on what happened in New York six years ago. A nation, a people should never forget, should never try to gloss over or let slide, as tempting as it may be, the memories of events pepetrated on other human beings that are just seemingly too outrageous and horrific for any but the most evil imagination to conjure. And while what happened that day was certainly not about me, or my family, in some ways it was about me and my family, because it forced me to think differently about the life and the world that I had taken for granted since birth. I was on an airplane that morning - of course, not one of the airplanes, another airplane, going to Florida, a trip I've taken countless times before (and since). We were in the air somewhere over Pennsylvania I think, when we got the news that the plane would be making "an unexpected landing for a matter of national security." People immediately started powering up cell phones, and snippets of news reports came flying throughout the plane. "Someone's bombed the Pentagon!" we heard. "A plane has crashed into the Capitol!" came another voice. "No, it's the World Trade Center! It's collapsed." I noticed the woman across the aisle from me, a woman about my age, whom I had noticed earlier in the flight because she was reading the same paperback book I was (Follow the Stars Home, by Luanne Rice) and because her sandals were really cute. But when she heard these scattered remarks, she turned whiter than any cloud flying by outside the window.

"My sons," she whispered, when I reached across to touch her hand. "One works at the Pentagon, and one works in New York." I gripped her hand across the aisleway between us, and held onto it as tightly as I could. Within about 45 minutes we landed in Greensboro, North Carolina. Jim and I had made our plans - we would rent a car, and drive the rest of the way. Ha! The airport terminal was like a madhouse, and there were certainly no rental cars to be had anywhere in the state of North Carolina. Like sheep, we followed the other passengers to a hotel in town, where the lot of us stayed for the next three days, sitting cross legged on the floor in the lobby, on our beds, flipping channels on the television sets we were glued to, watching as what seemed to be the end of the world unfold before our eyes. (By the way, I stuck closely to my seatmate from across the aisle, who eventually heard from both of her sons that they were fine.) Trapped 1000 miles in either direction from my son and the rest of my family, I was forced to confront my own complacency. "Bin Laden" and "Al Quaeda" were words I'd barely heard before, and now it appeared these people had the audacity, and yes, the power, to attack this country of mine. What struck me about that time was the way we were united in our grief, our horror, our disbelief, how our differences were forgotten and everyone wanted to help someone, anyone, somehow, because in doing something-anything-for someone else, we were in some small way a little less powerless. And what has struck me in the intervening years - just six short years, an eyeblink in historical terms - is the manner in which we have so quickly reverted to our self centeredness, our negativism, our crabbing and carping about the petty realities of daily life in these United States. Can we regain that sense of unity, that feeling of determination to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and take back our lives, that willingness to unselfishly give whatever measure of devotion might be required to make the world (and our loved ones) safe from that kind of horror? Politically, I have no idea. I'm not politically savvy, I never have been. I can't help but think, though, that individually, if we can try to remember those feelings from that day and use them in a positive way, each in our own small corners of the world, that life could be better and stronger for us in these United States. It is a day worth remembering, in many, many ways.