friends

personal eye

2008-01-23T00:24:06+00:00

We joke about people being married to their jobs, but the numbers in my own life tell quite a tale. A typical workday sees me awake for 17 hours. I spend nine of those with co-workers. Since Jeff and I keep slightly different work schedules, I only see him for about five hours per weekday.

The jokes become less comfortable when you realize that you're spending more hours per day with your co-workers than you do with the person you married. Co-workers don't have the same commitment to permanence that spouses do; they are people you spend time with, but not people you share everything with. I marvel at how few people find this strange or unusual.

A co-worker of mine died this past week after an extended illness. I did not know her as well as many of my co-workers did, but I was greatly saddened by her death. I enjoyed her company, though our social circles did not overlap. She was well-liked, and with reason. She was both pragmatic and knowledgeable, and -- important for someone in my line of work -- embraced computers and technology to a level that was not often seen in the books-and-paper world of libraries.

We had warning, of course; the quiet step of co-workers passing news down the hall told us that she had been worsening fast, but no endpoint or timeline was given us. I assumed days, not hours, but I was wrong. Another quiet step, another knock on the door, later that afternoon passed the news to our department.

I ached to see my co-workers cry, those people that I spent more time with on a daily basis than my spouse, but whom I didn't feel I had permission to hug. Later that afternoon, I was approached by other co-workers who asked, "Would you mind designing the memorial flyers?"

I did not cry then, not to the level of my co-workers, but the tears came when I slotted her photo into the layout. The combination of personal distress and professional graphic design was too dichotomous for my brain to handle well, and it unsettled me greatly when each step of the design approval process brought fresh tears from my co-workers. Someone had to approach the project with a professional, not a personal, eye, and evidently that someone needed to be me.

If you like the people you work with, the line between professional and personal can blur all too quickly.

I got word late last week that the funeral would be Monday, and harbored plans to attend the services between taking the last remaining visiting friends to the airport. As the weekend went on, I realized that my plans were plausible but perhaps not well thought out; by attending the funeral I would miss out on the last few hours of visiting with two people who had flown from South Carolina and Arizona to stay with us.

On Sunday night, I made up my mind to skip the funeral. I should have attended, but I also should have spent time with my houseguest-friends; given no good option, I chose to side with the living. I thought about her as we had lunch and bought coffee and gradually talked faster, trying to fit in months' worth of conversations in the half-hour left before airport time.

I thought about how the professional and personal worlds collide, whether we want them to or not. I put Jake and Scott on planes and thought of Helen, and wished them all well.

All three mattered, but choices had to be made.

Pacific time

2008-01-01T01:06:16+00:00

How to put this. How to say it in words. How to damp down thought, impression, compulsion into mere vocabulary, and leave it out for the world to see.

I hugged Brad, and I made a squeaky noise. When I had awakened earlier that morning and realized that I would see him and Alice that day, I realized it had been too long since I had seen them. Years too long.

I look back this afternoon on the years that have suddenly slipped past me and it makes me catch my breath to realize the person I crossed a border to see was someone who, through a bit of luck and good timing, has been a quiet, long-standing witness to the teenage, twenty-something, and thirty-something versions of me.

I turned to Jordan, Adam's brother, who knew none of this back story, and tried to think of a way to put it all into words. How to convey that if I dig back far enough in my memories I can remember years of my life in which Brad was just a name, a screen name, a familiar rhythm of text messages on a screen that despite all odds formed a real friendship? This man flew cross-country for my wedding, for God's sake, and I never got around to putting my hands on him yesterday, giving him a good shake, and saying, "Did you know that of all the things I remember about my wedding, the memory of your showing up to see it happen is one of the best parts?"

The thing is: we don't say these things. I want to say that I don't know why, but I do. It's self-preservation. If we temper what we show the world, hide a bit of emotion and feeling, we don't expose the tenderest part of ourselves. The world has sharp corners everywhere, and if we didn't protect ourselves a bit we'd spend our lives bruised.

* * * * *

The changing of a calendar year provokes introspection. This morning over coffee and donuts in Tim Horton's I looked at my friend, savored the pleasure of face-to-face conversation, and I ached when I realized that he was the only person at the table who actually had memories of my family, my teenage years, my college life. I could tell every person at the table that every year that passes makes me think of the people I've loved who are not alive to see this calendar change, but Brad actually knew three of the people on that list.

I don't know how to take New Year's. It's a holiday that has intense personal significance to me, but it's a time of mingling melancholy and excitement. Ring in the new. Remember the old. Celebrate who you are with but remember who is gone.

I'll make some calls on the midnights tonight, but tonight, mine is Pacific time. Tonight, everyone, not just me, thinks about where they've been and where they are going, and if my eyes leak a little, I have a socially-acceptable reason to do so.

So here's to 2007. Births and deaths, love and loss, the unending bounty of ceaseless change that is life and the people we share it with. Not everyone I love lived to see this new 2008. Not everyone I love will remember this day when they grow up, even though they lived it.

If you take away anything from my New Year's Eve, take this: be proud to be the friend that makes everyone laugh because you squeak and tacklehug them after not seeing them for years. Tell them you love them, even if it's risky. (Scratch that: especially if it's risky.)

So here's to 2008. Stick around, and we'll see how it goes.

Turkeymas 2007

2007-11-25T20:26:55+00:00

Through rain and hellish traffic, the 4-hour drive to Brian and Suzan's took just over 5.5 hours. We were grateful to have arrived there safe and sound, regardless of the hour. I love Thanksgivings with them, because it's a Thanksgiving of introversion; you don't have to sneak off to take time for yourself or make phone calls or just be alone. It's understood and encouraged, and I took advantage of it.

Brian ushered me into the computer room to hear something he had recorded. What started out as a normal audio blurb for his podcast turned into a recording of his reading of my admittedly batshit-insane entry, 'The Legend of Turkeymas.'

Or, as I said a few times that night, I'm not going to be able to live that entry down any time soon. What can I say? The level of insanity in the IT department was high on the day before Thanksgiving ... er, Turkeymas.

My photos trailed off as the day went on and I began to run out of social steam. I was glad of dinner, but watching and hearing my friends play Rock Band reminded me of something I should keep in mind for the future: karaoke makes my skin crawl. I don't know why I react so adversely, but I do. I found it easier to stay in the back room with my checked-out copy of Flatland, which I raced through much more quickly than I expected.

The next day was harder, but that's the next entry. Know this: Brian Richardson makes one hell of a good turkey. Photos are here:

milieu of humid strangeness

2007-07-25T11:52:44+00:00

"So how did it go," you ask?

I type this, looking down at the clock on the right-hand side of my computer's display. 6:38. I have a little bit of time, but not much. Today I really need to get out of here as early as possible, because I'm taking a long (paid) break in the middle of the day. My houseguest flies home today, and I'm not going to pass up the chance to have one last, lazy, caffeinated lunch with him before taking him to the airport and getting that quiet little lump in my throat I get every time I put someone I care about on a plane.

I write this knowing full well he's going to see it -- if my guess is correct, he'll even see it before I come back for the aforementioned lunch.

He turned out to be exactly the person I thought he was: funny, sharp, observant, but also every bit of genuinely likable that I'd hoped for. The same person who showed up for our late-night phone chats was the same person who Wii-bowled with my friends and -- get this -- charmed my cats. I cannot make this up, people: my prickly, pointy, bitey Edmund thinks my houseguest is here for no other reason than to rub his rotten, orange ears.

So, yes. He charms my cats, makes my husband laugh, fits in immediately with my friends and talks like an equal with my boss.

Oh, yeah, and we did a 645-mile road trip without killing each other.

"Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they're doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out..."

"You're curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go."
xkcd - "Choices: Part 4"

We did just that, and I'll put him on a plane today with a mix of gladness and sorrow. Gladness, that he is returning home, because his is not the milieu of humid strangeness that is the American South, but sorrow, because his home is far enough away that it will be quite some time before we jest at each other in person again.

I'm glad you visited, Adam. I'm glad you trusted the lot of us to come down here, never having met any of us. I hope we lived up to your expectations. You certainly lived up to mine.

Now call me when you wake up, so I'll know when to slip out of work and take you to lunch.

friends in fact

2007-07-17T03:09:12+00:00

No pain, no gain -- something like that.

On Wednesday, one of the last remaining friends from column 'n' ('netfriend') arrives in Huntsville. If you'd asked me this a couple of years ago, I'd have been unsurprised by these plans, but life does funny things and gets in the way while it's doing so, and as a result, we lost touch for about a year and a half.

It's a brave and scary thing, flying cross-country to couchsurf in a state and timezone you've never been in before, and scarier still if you've never met (in person) whom you're staying with. It's a move that, to the non-geeky folk in our lives, seems insane. But on the geek side of things, it makes an odd and random sort of sense.

After a while, you start wondering what someone's voice sounds like without cell phone compression artifacts. You wonder if they gesture with their hands when they talk, or if they'll enjoy your favorite tea as much as you do. Certain things you just can't find out about from the other side of the country.

Since getting back in touch, Adam and I have had a veritable barrage of emails, IMs, and phone calls. From my end, at least, I think I've done a decent job of catching him up on where my life's been going in the past couple of years. I get the impression I've gotten a decent chunk of his story as well.

Though, today, there was a new and strange moment in our friendship. I walked the aisles of Target, looking for ingredients for Wednesday's dinner, and as I turned past the shrimp end cap, back toward the vegetables, I blurted out as I reached for the mushrooms, "Does it feel a little strange, hearing me discuss picking up food that you're going to be eating on Wednesday?" He's always been over there, left-coast Pacific-time-zone wave-to-Canada over there, and I've always been here, drawly-colloquialism spitting-distance-from-Tennessee what's-a-hush-puppy down here. There was a vast old continent between us, and plenty of late-night stories...

...and in two more nights, he'll be the friend crashing out on the couch.

Why? He pointed me to a comic we both read, and it resonated with me too:

"Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they're doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out..."

"You're curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go."
xkcd - "Choices: Part 4"

Hard to imagine, really. There will be things we won't get right. Resolving text and voice to full-fleshed reality always involves a few glitches. Until he reads this, he probably didn't picture that I reach for things on high shelves by balancing on one tiptoe while sticking one leg out behind me. (Now, unfortunately for him, he's stuck with that image.)

We've got a week to find out what kind of friends we are in person. Brave soul, he's letting me throw him into the maelstrom of my life -- Wednesday night say-anything dinner, Friday night Southern potluck with the locals group, Tuesday with the librarians. We'll do day tours of historical sites in three states (yes, I am taking comp time to do this!) and log lots of hours in the Jetta, sightseeing and talking.

There will be cameras.

There will also be that moment at the airport, where all the envisioning snaps to reality, and two people who have already been friends in theory become friends in fact. There's nervousness. There's always nervousness. What if this person isn't what I thought? What if I'm not what this person expected?

It'll be nice to move him out of column 'n.'

It's going to be quite a week.

easter(n)

2007-04-29T04:01:44+00:00

How to say? How to acknowledge? Privacy means privacy, and thankfully I'm notable for being able to state the obvious in words that make things not so, so perhaps this is the best way to break through a multiple-month logjam of silence and say what needs saying.(Inscrutable? Sorry; this is a private message posted semi-publicly.)

There is no 'me and you,' and never has been; this funny friendship has meant many things over the years, most unspoken and unacknowledged, but there for both of us. Easter brought you back to me, reminded me of why I have Life A here in Huntsville and Life B in Atlanta, reminded me of why I think the drive is worth it and why I'm unlikely ever to have a life, singular, in one place or the other.

I've missed having you around. We were both morons, and had we the bravery or the bluntness to speak up earlier, we might have prevented the months of silence. Did the audience clap and cheer? I think they may have, but I was blissfully unaware.

We owe him a favor for making us talk to each other once again. I hated the months of seeing your number scroll by in my list of friends, wanting to call but never doing so, never certain if my voice would be welcomed on the other end of the line, too shy to email and say, "Why?" because I feared an answer that, it turns out, was not the one that was coming.

Morons, as I said.

Easter is rebirth and spring, and joy for my religious friends, of which we neither are, really. I will not begrudge them their celebrations if they do not begrudge me mine; mine is as different as it is heartfelt.

I missed you.
I missed her.

It came through on Easter morning, a non-religious resurrection of spirit without ceremony or artifice.

Some celebrations must be taken on their own terms.

Welcome back. There was always a place with your name on it. It's good to see you in it again.