Friendship is born at the moment
when one person says to another, "What!
You too? I thought that no one but myself. . . .
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Each friend represents a world in us,
a world not possibly born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Anais Nin (1903-1977)
I felt it shelter to speak to you.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
These quotations remind me of a marriage. Perhaps given how long I have been married, that is inevitable. I suspect we all have a best friend or two and if our spouse is one, so much the better. But good no matter what. When I am outside raking Mr. Wiggles is my best friend. I protect him from the hawks circling and he bravely routs the deer.
Dr. Mary Pipher (Post 3/9/19) calls the friends who navigate life with us our "Travel Companions." She calls our spouses our "Co-Captains." On the day that our son called to say the doctor thought it was melanoma, long-time friends showed up to help us through the night. I say his name in my heart as I write this. When the cancer returned almost two years later different friends came to sit with us. Friends came every day until he died. On that day a car with an out-of-state license plate was in the driveway when we returned from the hospital. "These better be friends," I said. Sure enough they were. We were plied with food and prayers. Friends provided shelter. We survive.
With best friends and spouses we can communicate complicated multilayered emotions with few words or none. We're lucky when we have a friend with whom together we create a new entity--the friendship. They share our pain. "Women," Pipher says, "excel at troubles talk." Isn't that the truth! And they amplify our pleasure. Pipher says we can define our wealth as the time we have available to nurture our friendships. I would add our marriages as well. The time we share as co-captains, equal in partnership.
Some marriages falter after the death of a child, or any trauma. Anais Nin expresses it like this:
Love never dies a natural death.
It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source.
It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals.
It dies of illness and wounds.
It dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
Anais Nin
As she says, it takes blindness or betrayal to kill love. Wounds that won't heal, or a withering from neglect. A misplaced allegiance that tarnishes the relationship.
But some marriages grow stronger. The partners work to replenish love's source. Their love becomes their glory. Couples can choose to bear their traumas together, can choose a new vigilance and not grow weary. Some couples learn to have difficult conversations. Some feel a rush of tenderness when they look at one another.
Many of us have read Madeline L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time). She says,
A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility,
to friendship, to companionship.
It is certainly not that passion disappears,
But that it is conjoined with other ways of love.
Madeline L'Engle (1918-2007)
This is what I've been thinking about this lovely North Carolina spring day. It's true that there are toxic 'friendships' and marriages that are better severed. Friendships that serve ego needs and marriages of unkindness. But there are many of the other kind too, aren't there? Friendships we keep alive not out of habit but because we want to spend time together. Marriages we know are healthy because when we are apart we miss each other. All of these quotes by better thinkers than I am. I bow to them. Nina Naomi
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