A Friendly Conversation

One of my mother’s best friends passed away recently. A friend who, before her move out west was a regular in our home, and as much a part of my life as any family friend could become, her history a part of our history. Her parents had been dear friends of my grandparents, the two families within walking distance on Vista Circle and, as the story goes, the young girls were forced to play together as children. But I’m sure that is where many stories like this begin as over the years not much in common became quite a bit in common.

My mother was fortunate to have several friendships like this one, or I suppose I should say—fortunate that this friendship was part of a larger friendship; several young girls who were introduced as children and cultivated relationships that would endure the rest of their lives.

Years ago, one of them found an old black and white photo of them all together, lined up for a photographer, perhaps at a spring birthday party, all in dresses, pretty white shoes and curls, holding hands and smiling. My mother has it framed and keeps it beside another picture of the same girls, some 50 years later, smiling the kind of smile you’d smile if you were with people you’d known and loved for that long. They have seen each other through marriage, children, loss of children, children never born. Some divorced. Several became widows. The emotions of a thousand independent milestones, shared among them all.

I wish for this kind of southern friendship, this ya-ya sisterhood, and I work to build it with the special people that I know. But as any woman in her 30's would surely agree, friendships are complicated. They all begin by happenstance: a few doors down on Vista Circle. Second encounters planned tenderly and purposefully, our willingness like a blessing whispered upon them, borne of great expectations for all the things we hope to be for one another.

Most don’t last like we hope they will. They remain important, historical: funny memories, valuable anecdotes. Maybe we don’t live near each other anymore, maybe she didn't speak the right words when she needed to, or maybe you didn't do the right thing when you should have. Maybe our points were too staggered on life’s timeline: You: married, kids, suburbia. Me: single in the city. These kinds of friendships leave quietly and unnoticed, like something you don’t even realize you've dropped.

But some of these friendships have an elastic quality, they are patient and resilient. They stretch across great distances and hold their breath underwater for a staggering amount of time, only to pop back up, buoyant and unchanged. These are great friendships. They are monumental, they have a complex past: stories of inconvenience and trust. They are hilarious and quirky, generous and forgiving. And they know everything about you.

Fortified and abandoned by the presence or absence of dialogue, even the greatest friendships are vulnerable in silence. So the next time we are seated together at the table while the children play peacefully in another room I will ask you about your day, about your family, your life in the city, about how you felt and what you did, where you came from and where you want to go…

And when we are 50 I hope someone takes a picture of us, telling our secrets, keeping the conversation.

Inspirational Property

It was late summer 2013. I was at a popular brunch spot for a lively celebration of a friend’s 40^th birthday. I had just had a baby 3 weeks prior and was feeling a little lost from myself between the sleepless nights, the constant feedings, and the ignited neediness of my other two children, both of them home all the time, waiting out that last hot month before school begins. And I don’t mean to add all that in as though it were a feeling only a new mother could have, as though we had the market cornered on displacement. But I do think we are, perhaps, more prone toward it; tip toeing around familiar places, spit up in our hair and on the shoulders of shirts we Just. Changed. Into.  All day long: keeping rooms straight and bottles clean, keeping the time, keeping the peace, breasts full and body aching, so deeply grounded in motherhood. I would welcome 3am and the quiet of the playroom where I could sit in the still of the night, hooked up to my pump, remembering who I was before all of this, before I shopped for nursing bras and knew what a Boppy was.

And then: this Sunday afternoon, a long and lonely shower!! A dress that still fit just fine and plans with friends. Beignets like clouds. Cinnamon sugar. Someone playing a piano. Laughter. Mimosas! Uninterrupted conversation. Heaven…And I found her in the powder room mirror, staring back at me with an electric grin. 

A while later, warm from the sun and champagne, I turned on my car and with it the radio which was playing “Blurred Lines” and I was young and happy and full of love and gratitude for the simplicity of fun. I turned the music up as loud as it would go and, windows down, driving faster than I should have, I sang and I danced and I lived in the moment, just like everyone is always telling us to.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that day in light of the court’s decision to award the Gaye family millions in damages due to copyright infringement, a decision which I find sad and perplexing, making the creative process about money, two things that really should never be in the same room together if anything truly great ever hopes to leave.

While I am not an artist in the professional sense, I like to think that, when writing, I have a method that resembles theirs, if only on an elementary level. And here’s what I know: My words are mine in the sense that they come from my hand and are put on my paper, but their origins are rooted in the first novel I couldn't put down, prose that stirred my soul, rich poetry that changed how I understood the movement of language, an English teacher’s kind, encouraging smile, the summer spent at writing camp, our desks in circles, our hands shaking with the energy of mutual enthusiasm for finding the right words. A professor with higher expectations and an insistence on fact checking. A ball point pen that glides. The smell of the ink, the lines on the paper. It is all mine but it belongs to all these things, a lifetime of useful moments.

Years ago, a particular night with a particular boy: we sat on the floor in a half-lit basement with half-full glasses of wine and listened to Marvin Gaye and King Curtis and Otis Redding, their music providing the pulse for two young people talking about things that young people like to talk about: moving to a bigger city, doing something that means something, ideas seeming important and the future full of gravity and potential.  

Alive with Motown and heady saxophone, I went home and wrote a lovely poem for him which I hope he still has today…

…I guess I owe Nona Gaye 50 cents for that.

Why Thank You Notes Matter (to me)

This morning I read something that threw the time-honored tradition of thank-you note writing under the proverbial bus. It basically accused a collaboration of over-achieving moms for perpetuating the notion that these “mundane tasks” are archaic and impossible and entirely inconvenient. This is not the first time I have read or seen or heard something or someone speak of thank you notes as though they were a nuisance, a relic from times past, from the days when mothers had time to insist upon niceties.

Given the average number of times these kinds of rants are tweeted and shared, I am certain I am in the minority, but nonetheless…I disagree. Here’s why:

We live in a world where, quite obviously, we undervalue thoughtfulness and gratitude. We complain about tasks that, if we were to take a step back from them and think about why we do them, we might be reminded of why the tradition began in the first place. “A personal, handwritten thank-you note is the finest form of expressing gratitude”. There may be hand cramps, and little to say at times, but it is a monumental “teachable moment”, to sit closely with your child, to think about a gift, to make considerations with them about how to appropriately relate to another person that you recognize an effort on their part to do something for you.

The fact is, we are not born grateful. No child has ever exited the womb and turned toward its mother to indicate anything other than hunger and the need for comfort. As our children grow, taking becomes remarkably easy. It begins with the simple joy of learning to open a present; the delicious act of pushing back the ribbon and the excitement of tearing apart the colorful paper…20 years later we are masters, creators of online gift registries. We see a sign that says “Take One” and we do. Free Samples? Yes, please! Finders Keepers, etc, etc and so on and so forth. We are a culture of anonymous acceptors.

I believe that one of our many responsibilities as parents is to teach our children that to give is to receive and to receive is to appreciate appropriately. What better way to accomplish this than with the intensely personal process of writing a handwritten note? We are not only teaching an exercise of gratitude, but also the foundations of civility, humanity, humility, understanding and thoughtfulness. Respect for one another and time taken.

I put to you the idea that writing a note is not a task, a chore to go about begrudgingly with a scowl on your face. Rather, a demonstration of love and friendship. When I write a note, I try and think about not only the gift or the act for which I am appreciative, but the person who cared enough to give it. I imagine you collecting your mail and finding my letter among bills and fliers and other unpleasantries. I imagine that perhaps the petite frame of the note and the sideways-ness of my awkward left-handed scrawl brought a smile to your face. And then, upon opening and reading the note, you felt: glad. Glad for giving, glad for our friendship, glad for a life where people still do things like send notes through the mail.

It isn’t always convenient, and certainly not easy to pin down a 5 year old for 40 minutes. But surely, most definitely, worth the effort.

“The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

Now you’ll have to excuse me. My daughter and I have some letters to write.