Friendship as an endless conversation
friends in the modern world
Years ago I adopted the philosophy that friendship is an endless conversation. We live in a world where people come and go from our lives, we don’t live on the same street from birth until death and in the same communities. We study abroad, go away to university, host exchange students, move, immigrate, etc. We marry people from other places and have families spread out all over the country and/or world. Along the way we meet people and forge friendships and thanks to technology, we are able to maintain those friendships…if we so choose.
The postpartum phase of a mother’s life is extremely intense and isolating (I am not sharing anything groundbreaking here) but one of the saving graces has been the friends who have “shown up” for me (both physically and virtually). We all have those friends that we love because “we can pick up right where we left off.” Or, we don’t have to see one another daily to know they love us and are there for us. I have been listening to and sending voice notes to a friend on my morning walks and she listens to mine and sends others back. It’s a bit of a disjointed conversation, if you will, but that’s what correspondence was before we had the instantaneousness of communication with phones and email, text message, etc.
We talk about our children, ourselves, our emotions, our relationships (not just with our husbands but with others, in general, and how those change in this phase of life), we talk about our families, and mutual friends and not mutual friends, we reminisce about memories we’ve made together and dream about getting together in the future…with our children. It feeds my soul. It’s also lovely because on my morning walks I stumble on fruit trees and pick and eat fresh fruit and often comment to Whitney as I do.
We end each message with “ahh I have so much more to tell you” or “we just need a weekend together” but the truth is we are never going to be “caught up” we are never going to have exhausted everything we want to talk about because the friendship is infinite and safe—if I can be so bold to use that word. It reminds me of the words of Dinah Maria Craik,
Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having to neither weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
It is a wonderful feeling to just pour out my thoughts, my feelings, my tears, my joy, and even my rage and know that I won’t hurt or insult her, to know that she will take what I’m giving and accept it for what it is…me sorting out this difficult time of life characterized by lots of changes—from physical to biological—and just hold me there. And to not just listen but to hear. What a great feeling that I wish for everyone.
I am so grateful for the endless conversations that are the friendships in my life. I hope I provide the same for others. Here’s to keeping the conversation going, regardless where in the world you are. And even if the responses are slow and disjointed. Happy Saturday, beautiful souls, thank you for bearing with me with my sporadic posts.