The Wheelbarrow of Friendship
Is that why I have so few friends?
So much depends upon…
Friends.
It’s a school night. One of the first true spring evenings when the birch and willow trees have begun to understand that it’s OK to send out their first green scouting leaves. Someone gets the idea that we all should crawl up on the flatbed of his pickup and drive out to the lake for a bonfire. Some cogs turn the right way in all of our teenage brains, and we all think it’s the most brilliant idea ever. We crawl up on the flatbed and position ourselves as hotdogs in a package, and off we go. It’s exhilarating! We’re a somewhat brackish group. Some closer, some acquainted, but tonight it’s a perfect group. We’ve never done anything like this before. We come back home freezing cold, and happy.
It’s around midsummer. We’re walking through our village, a group of us. It’s one of the few times we have walked together along of dirt road, all of us. Together. Talking, laughing, moving forward in time. Together. At one point four of us walk asidelong, and it makes me happy. It makes me happy to feel that I belong. There is absolutely nothing special about this evening other than that it might be the happiest I have been among my teenage friends. Because we are walking together. And is beautiful and simple.
It’s the last day of August, and the nights are already dark. It’s unusually warm and we sit on the deck of someone’s summer cottage. It is perfectly balmy, as I imagine it feels on the Mediterranean shores I have never visited. We’re all probably smoking cigarettes and drinking something while waiting for it to get late enough to go into town and see what happens in the clubs. The calmness and lack of worry is stunning. The dark and calm ocean glitters in front of us and even some stars light up the night sky. We chat with new friends, and it is also the first time I ever see someone use a blotting paper. Much later that very same evening, when we get back from town, we sit in front of the TV and watch the news that Princess Diana has just died.
It’s Boxing Day, and we agree to meet up at the pool hall in town. It becomes a tradition for many years, and the group grows larger. Every year on December 26th to this day, I still think about our meet ups. It was the last times we hung out together in our original constellation of friends before life’s great playground merry go round flung us out into the periphery with a bitter laugh.
So much depends upon…
Oneself.
Was I a poor friend?
Am I a poor friend?
When I steered my ship into the rain and wind towards a distant shore, did I betray them?
When I decided to walk into an unknown forest or cross an arid desert or climb up a strange mountain, did I leave them behind?
When I had to rebuild myself and find myself again and again, did I become unrecognizable?
Is that why I have so few friends?
So much depends upon…
Resolve.
It’s irritating and borderline ridiculous to look for and download wisdom quotes. But here we are — irritating ourselves and possibly you as well. Let’s analyze a little, just a little. Replace the word “happiness” with “friends” and you’re good to go.
As with all deeply hurtful things in life, getting through is the worst because we cannot fathom when we’ll get through it or what is there on the other side. Listening to so called helpful advice whilst in the midst of an infernal storm is usually unappetizing and so we often resort to rowing our dinghy by ourselves in the wrong direction for months and months until we hit land. By accident.
I’m not entirely sure why this one spoke to me. It feels a bit like a line in country ballad. But I think it’s trying to tell me something. It’s a clue. There’s something to it about not making the same mistake again. I make the same mistakes again. And again. And again.
Every time I realize I have made the same mistake again I tell myself: “OK, I have learned my lesson now. Now I have leveled up. Now I understand. Now I am prepared if this ever happens to me again.” But life likes to throw funny and unexpected and random things at you! Like really random things. And then I make the same mistake — and wonder how many times I need to learn this lesson. Ten? Twenty?
So I am making a resolution — can’t tell you this is very thoroughly planned as I am totally improvising here, but let’s see what happens — to allow true friendship into my life. To step into the same river again and all that. To be a good friend.
What I haven’t said out loud yet, is that awkward thing that most of probably don’t like to admit. At least not often. And that is that we’re somehow searching for perfection, while forgetting how immensely flawed we are ourselves. I am, perhaps, one of the most flawed friends because I have so few friends.
The William Carlos Williams poem came back to me the other day. That one about the red wheelbarrow. I hadn’t thought of it since I was in an English class in college. Well, that isn’t quite true. Every time I hear the phrase: “Well, so much depends on…” I think of this poem. That red wheelbarrow has something to do with friendship. I am quite sure of it now. So much depends upon friendship. Friendship in rain. It is still there, strong, in the rain. Somehow.
What I have come to understand, very slowly, throughout many years — is that to find and forge a new friendship in the adult stages of life, it does help to be in the presence of, well, other people. To listen to another human being. To hear and understand and learn more about another human being’s experience of this thing we call life. To listen. To truly listen. And to share of one’s imperfections and flaws — and wait to see if it holds.
And then — to hold this beautiful imperfection up to the sun like a bright turquoise gem and then bring it close to one’s chest in gratitude. Because we have to remember that we all have been it that dinghy on that strange ocean we can only journey on alone, and very very very few of us are perfect captains.
This is my submission for the Soaring Twenties Social Club Symposium. We are a group of creatives and writers who share ideas and companionship. Each month, STSC members create something around a theme, this month's theme being “Resolutions.” I hope you enjoyed it.
Want to read more of my stuff? My sci-fi anthologies: Errante and No End Code
Loved this piece on cultivating friendship as adults, which feels underappreciated as a skill to bestow given how easy it is to do as kids and how nebulous it is as adults.
I used to suck at making friends. I still do, but now I’m better at loving people as they come.