Friendship and Solitude

Friendship is a mystery to me. What have I given to have earned it? What am I doing right to be allowed to keep it? I am a person who likes my solitude, needs it, in fact. My mind is less alive when there is too much noise. The life of the mind is my life. I am, therefore I think.

But friendship is the opposite of solitude. A solitude-craving person should, logically, be a rotten friend. And, extending the logic, a rotten friend should have few friends. But though a poor friend, I am not poor in friends. This is a miracle that needs some explaining.

I have several friends who call just to check. I finished one such call yesterday and realized we had talked for twelve minutes. The topic of conversation for all twelve minutes was nothing. Nothing at all. Yet we were having a good time, with much laughter and the usual acknowledgements that the world makes no sense. A splendid gift, twelve minutes of nonsense, and a true gift; was I as giving in return? I called her back and told her we ought to be sisters; only relatives could talk so long about so little. I love freefall conversations like that, but how do we do it? The miracle and the joy is in the talking, but it is a mystery how friends talk so easily.

Some of my friends are specialists. I have one collection of movie buddies, another group of garden devotees, a huge contingent of dog aficionados, and a slowly growing cadre of art and craft enthusiasts. But most of my friends are just friends. How come? Again, the miracle defies logic.

I have friends I’ve known since college, meaning since the 1960s. I have friends I’ve just met. One of the qualities that defines these people as friends is our ability to pick up a conversation from where we left off, even if that conversation was twenty years ago.

Another of the qualities that defines us as friends is we almost never tell one another how much we mean to each other. My sister recently gave me a photo of two sticky frogs that I cherish and keep on my desk. The caption reads, “Good friends stick together.” A hand written note came stuck to it as well. It read, “Even great artists need cutesy crap on their walls; I’m lucky to have a sister who is a friend.” Not all relatives are friends, but all friends are relatives. There’s a miracle to ponder.

Above: Friends, digital drawing. Copyright 2010 ptw