THE "MEDIUM FRIEND"

 

Berthe Morisot, TWO GIRLS, 1894

I never heard the phrase "medium friend" before today when I read an article called "The vexing problem of the Medium Friend" by Lisa Miller. I've been thinking about friendship lately.   friends are important.  We don't want to vex. or be vexed by, our friends

Closest friends by definition cannot test the limits of our time, love or energy.  We love them, we make time for them, we preserve our energy for them. If one thing falls through, we schedule another. Best friends are called that for a reason; they are not second best in our lives.  

Medium friends are also genuine friends.  We laugh together, share news, bring insights and have serious conversations.  We may share a history of neighborhood, work or school, or have similar interests.  There are bonds. I think of my college roommate, a friend from 7th grade on, but because of distance, over the years we have each made closer friends.  Our history is deep but our contact infrequent.  Yet just thinking of her brings a warmth to my heart.    

So what is vexing about this?  The article says, and we know, that reciprocity is the foundation of friendship. Imbalance is a stumbling block.  The tension in a medium friendship arises from asymmetric expectation.  You may like your medium friend more than they like you, or vice versa.  One of us may want more time or sharing than the other. With our closest friends, as with our partners, we sort this out.  But without that closeness, with medium friends the different expectations continue. The relationship suffers from a lack of clarity.  What do we each want from the other?  In a way, it can--but shouldn't--be like dating

Miller writes that the "silences around a medium friendship are recognizable . . . to anyone who [hears] 'I'll call you' too many times."  One man wonders whether his feeling that a friend depends upon him too much is a result of his own sense of self-importance rather than any neediness in her. But being a "medium friendship," they never approach it.  Another person is hurt to be introduced as a "work friend."  "I thought we were closer than that," he thinks, but never says.  Another is confused because her friend cancels and doesn't follow up to reschedule.

"Such an imbalance confounds and wounds us," the author says," leaving us feeling powerless, angry or self-critical.  But we have no recourse."  Our friendships are bound by invisible lines we may not even be aware of ourselves.  

So what might be a different view of friendship?  The article discusses one not ranked (or giving rise to divergent expectations), but where each friendship is organic.  I have a group of knitting friends, a book group made of friends, couples' friends who are so close they are like family, couples we eat out with.  You may have the perfect tennis partner or walking buddy.  I may have someone who understands the law the way I do, or literature; who loves dogs or follows Duke basketball; or enjoys a serious conversation.  Who shares my faith or love of nature and gardening.  Who will knit or craft with me or go shopping.  Each friendship can flourish on its own terms.  We are both served.  What a lovely medium friendship.  And if it waxes and wanes, that's what friendships do.  They serve a purpose that might dissolve for one of the friends or for both.  Or they may rekindle because the friendship was deep enough or rewarding enough to outlast the waning.  

This article gave me much to think about today.  It was time well-spent.  Perhaps with these insights I can enrich my friendships as well.  

                                In friendship, Nina Naomi 

LET'S SHARE . . . by Nina Naomi

 

Let's Share . . . 

by Nina Naomi

Not what you do for a living,

But what you have learned from the past.

Not the year I was born,

But my thrill in being alive.

Not if I'm Aries, you're Leo.

But what is the core of our sorrows.

If you've lied to yourself and regret it .

Or been lied to and now are on guard.

 

Can you can sit with grief (mine or yours)

And not try to hide it or fix it?

Can you dance with joy (yours or mine)

And not be self-conscious or shamed?

Tell me your day fills with beauty

As the simplest pleasures fill mine.

 

Let's not care where we live

Or what money we make.

Let's not tell who we know,

Where we travel,

Or any of that, let's just not. 

 

But if we can share despair when (and not if) it comes?

Stand in the center together

When all else falls away?

 

If we know that 

Alone with ourselves we are whole,

And could be the same with eachother,

Then will we know we are faithful,

And can each give our trust in return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A LIFE THAT TAKES ITS TIME, PART II

"Do Your Best to Enjoy Today"

After all why not?  Why would we ever put NO EFFORT into enjoying our day? We owe ourselves that much.  This week a friend made room for four of us on her patio.  With all the time now to tend and putter at home, her garden was perfect.  Shady, weeded, bursting with color (bright blue hydrangeas), with paths, stone borders and a bubbling fountain.
 

Blue Hydrangea

We all got caught up on how we're coping and who we're missing.  A needed break from the news cycle, which is worse than it has been in many of our lifetimes.  (I'm not going to talk about the disconnect between our president congratulating himself while we have the highest death tally in the world . . . Well, OK, but that one sentence is it.) 

Last night other friends with a lovely back garden, au naturel with volunteer seedlings, wild violets and a hodge podge of paving stones, brick and weathered concrete, had us over.  I feel grateful. 

 

Then this afternoon I went back to Irene and Astrid's A Book that Takes its Time ("A Life that Takes its Time," 6/17/20) and came across these lines from a poem by Octavio Paz (1914-1998), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1990:

  "All is visible and all elusive,

 all is near and can't be touched. . . . 

Time throbbing in my temples repeats 

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

. . .                 

Motionless, 

I stay and go:  I am a pause."

               Between Going and Staying

I think this feels like now. I too am a pause some days.  Things can seem near but unreachable.  The poem is bittersweet. 

Then this: 

   Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone. 

This charming book also has a chapter on why we might want to leave our comfort zones.  The author, journalist Caroline Buijs, writes that everyone needs to go on having new experiences if only because they make our lives seem longer.   I never thought of that as a reason for new experiences. Of course, we've all had to postpone many of our anticipated ventures for this year.  But I think it's true that we have also found ways to expand our worlds and that having time to think is something we can use to our advantage. 

I like some of our new habits: entertaining just a few friends at a time and outdoors; shopping quickly and less often; more time with the person I love. Many of us even like having fewer choices. We're all finding new ways to cope with uncertainty, some quite simple like today:  Saturday afternoon skillet-popped corn and a movie.  I hope you're enjoying your day too. 

Midsummer Geranium

  

   

  

HEALTHY ATTITUDES (LOVERS AND FRIENDS)

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

 

 

 

A PLACE TO STOP, THINK AND WONDER, PART III

The Denial of St. Peter, Gerard Seghers (1591-1651)

Museums are such wonderful places.  I've written about them before.  So many people agree.  School groups, singles, parents and children all wandering about looking.  A place to stop, think and wonder.  But I hadn't paid enough attention to the museums close to home.  The North Carolina Museum of Art is a mere 1/2 hour drive away.  Because my brother is an artist we decided to go there when he came to visit.  What an enriching experience! Look at the light in this beautiful painting, how it shines on the faces, how St. Peter is illuminated. Of course I wanted to read about how this was achieved.  I learned that the luminosity and plasticity of the oils gave new color and realism to the Renaissance paintings. Before that frescoes had been painted with tempera--somewhat like the chalk paints we use for furniture today.   

The Museum was also having a Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) show, juxtaposing her work with younger artists influenced by her.  She is of course known best for her outsize flowers. She said about flowers, 

Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. 
We haven't time and it takes time--
like to have a friend. 

Isn't that a wonderful comparison, that taking time to see something as fragile and wondrous as a flower is like taking time for friendship?  Because I am now deep into my Mindfulness and Meditation course this resonates with me.  Seeing, paying attention whether to our friends or to nature.  Being aware, being present.

O'Keeffe didn't only paint nature, but I didn't know that before.  I'm an art novice.  This is one of her early portraits, Woman with Apron (1918), described as "whirling washes of saturated color."
 

Woman with Apron, O'Keeffe, 1918

This next one too is of pure saturated color and was maybe my favorite of hers in the exhibit.  It seems like the expression of an emotion.  I could look at it everyday. Do you like this sort of painting?  So different from her famous flowers.  

Evening Star No. II, O'Keeffe, 1917

But what I really loved was being introduced to the paintings of Anna Valdez (b. 1985).  Valdez, I learned, paints natural forms along side domestic objects.  Like O'Keeffe, her work is characterized by rigorous observation.  I love the floral forms and decorative patterning.  They're almost like illustrations. Yet every inch of the canvas is filled with color.  Different from the simple swaths of color in the O'Keeffe paintings.  What do you think?  Would you like to look at something like this when you woke in the morning?  Or came home from work?  Would it cheer you, make you happy?  Intrigue you?  I think it would me.  

Deer Skull with Blue Vase, Valdez, 2017

Study-ing, Valdez, 2015

Sometimes it seems like a museum won't provide enough entertainment or stimulation.  We're so used to speed and instant gratification.  But a museum is always worth a visit.  We look beyond ourselves into the creative minds of others.  I'd like to do this more. 

HEALTHY ATTITUDES (SELFISH REQUESTS vs FRIENDSHIP)

I'm familiar with a local writer asking Twitter cohorts to be part of a "Launch Team," i.e. "'Let's be friends' and you help sell my book."  The pitch went out to everyone following the saga of a young cancer survivor (who now calls herself a 'cancer alumnus'), of whom there are many who live quietly in gratitude and service.  You're so fill-in-the-blank (kind, helpful, special, know me, love me, follow me, have prayed for me, have your own following, are influential, etc.) that you'll help me sell my book.  After all, many friends have been asking what I need.  Well, I don't need a casserole or a ride to the doctor anymore.  I need a best-seller. I've written about my journey.  But I need to get it on the shelves.  You can help me do that. 

This made me think--not about Marketing 101, but about friendship.  

Two Girls in Front of Birch Trees, Paula Modersohn-Becker, 1905

All best-selling authors, I daresay, have private lives with friends who love them for themselves and vice versa.  The friends are there for them rain or shine but are not part of their marketing endeavors.  They don't become an unpaid salesforce.  

Soliciting help from friends is healthy.  But doesn't it depend on what we are soliciting help for?  For the school fund-raiser?  Or for our personal gain?  To help us through a rough patch? Or so that we can become a commercial success?  After-all, one of the hallmarks of a being a true friend to someone is that we do for each other but do not use each other.  You know the admonition:  Love people but use things.  Lebanese writer, poet and visual artist Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) says it beautifully:

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility,

Never an opportunity. 

Gibran's quote made me ponder how graciously accepting an unsolicited offer from a friend is different from what we call a "Selfish Request."  You know, imposing on the generosity of others by asking for favors either blatantly or through manipulation. Sometimes this is done ingenuously:  "Selfish Request coming up . . . ."  

I have seen requests so labeled from this particular writer.  Cajolingly appealing.  "I need a quiet place to write. [And I had cancer.] Your beach house?"  Followed by the same request to another colleague with a beach house.  And then another?  Leaving dirty towels behind her.  Selfish requests. 

None of these thoughts has to do with the merits of this surviver's book.  We all have times when connecting with others helps. We remember that we are not alone.  Whenever we must learn to live with sadness as a companion to our happiness, our friends help us.

So yes, we should do something when bad things happen.  Write if that's our talent.  Set up a foundation if we have money.  Do research if we are of that bent.  Create a memorial.  Become an activist.  Crusade--that's how MADD was founded (Mothers Against Drunk Driving).  And yes, we should ask for help from others--help to process a loss, to recover from a loss, to make it day to day through a loss, to fight injustices, to right wrongs, to contribute to a cause.  So many ways to help others.  

Something that is not a "selfish request" in any way.  Something that is not commercial or narcissistic.  Really, something that does not earn us money or help us climb the ladder of success.  Now that sounds healthy, doesn't it?