I am so lucky as to have old friends. Old friends go all the way back to before you carried the weight of your world, or at least to before you carried all of it. They’ve stayed in your life despite all the shit you’ve done and they’ve done, good and bad, which could have carried them away from you, but didn’t, or not permanently, anyway. Somehow, they remain. They know, if not everything about you, enough to see your greatest strengths and your regrettable weaknesses, yet still love you to death.. They take your entirety. They look forward to opportunities to see you – it’s never a chore. You know without even thinking about it, by the sheer number of years they’ve been around, that they’re not going anywhere, and so you can exhale a big sigh of relief and be truly yourself.
When you are with old friends, you can watch dynamics play out that are decades old, or decades in the making, but you never find them wearing, or dull. They are simply there – familiar, comforting and renewing. I was renewed, quite recently, by a weekend away with old friends at a cozy, well-worn farmhouse in New England.
Most remarkably, there was a member of our party, the hostess in fact, who didn’t go back as far as the rest of us, but it felt like she could have. Old friends will embrace as one of their own anyone who wants to be there with them. Anyone who takes them all on because she loves one of them, and who is intuitive and observant enough to know what is reassuring, and worth preserving about their interactions. And, of course, who is lovely herself. Such a person is readily counted as one of the old gang.
Razzing and laughter at dinner gave way to reminiscences into the night, and no one felt like they had to be a certain way, do a certain thing, or even show up. I myself got wasted on Benedryl due to my concern that the smells of the old house meant certain asthma, and went to bed hours before the others. But there was no opprobrium; just the gentle teasing that make you feel the love. A late breakfast, hair of the dog for some, the New York Times crossword, and once we were all refreshed, we splintered off into our different activities. Some chose walking, others biking, still others swimming or reading. We all managed to congregate on the grass outside the old farmhouse for a slow afternoon. No one felt bored, no one felt slothful. We were all just happy to be relaxed…and together. I can’t remember the last time the air felt so fresh, the view so beautiful (meadow, blue sky and distant trees) and time such a gorgeous slow motion swirl of sunshine, buzzing insects, moving clouds and an occasional smile or wordless message exchanged among the celebrants. All set to the magical soundtrack coming from a tiny speaker.
The magic lasted through several meals, a movie, another morning crossword, even up to and past the time to separate. The feelings we shared – of peace, acceptance, good will, love – stayed with us. I had the very good fortune to ride back to my everyday life with the oldest of these old friends. We listened to music and took in the scenery together. I did not bury my head in a book, or lose myself in my own thoughts. I was there, with my friend, nodding and smiling, through all the great songs we bobbed to, all the gorgeous vistas, and the occasional comment offered by one of us. I wanted to be there for as long as I could.
This oldest of friends and I had been sitting together on the grass the day before, during the magical afternoon where time slowed, and at one point we began reflecting on how old friends differ from regular friends. “It’s as if there is a drill that goes through all your layers, all the phases of your life that have accumulated, and old friends can see the different striations, all the different layers that make you… you,” I offered. “I get that, I get that, “ my friend said, nodding in his very beatnik way, the giant heart walking on two legs that he is. “And it’s the core that served as the magnet from the very beginning,” he then observed so brilliantly. Then he went off in a different direction, inspired perhaps by the almost impossibly large and very old pear tree right in front of us. “Maybe an old friend is like an old tree. The trunk is solid and can be counted on, and the many, many limbs aren’t strange, even if they go off in different directions, twisting this way and that. You just look at the trunk and see that they are all part of the one tree.”
I liked that, thinking that each one of us is a tree, with many limbs, and together we are an orchard, where it is safe and lovely to lie and look up at the moving clouds, and float with the sweet perfume of memories, carried by the soft breeze of here and now.
On the way back, we stopped for a piss. His piss, by the side of the road. After I told him that I didn’t want to see him pee, and that he had to be out of my sightline or have his back to me at the very least, he did what he needed and returned with a bouquet of Queen Anne’s Lace. He had pulled them from the side of the road after the deed was done (from a different spot, I’m presuming), and taken the longest stem of one and wrapped and knotted it around the others for a tie. He dropped them onto my lap with the barest of smirks. About fifty miles earlier, I had been sappily watching wave after wave of that wildflower pass by, and remarked to the air, “I love Queen Anne’s Lace. It reminds me of my childhood in the Bronx.” The air, it seems, was paying attention. He doesn’t go back all the way with me to the Bronx, this friend, but far back enough to be there, in my orchard. The sweetness of his gesture summoned up the full range of feelings shared among us all.
