After one failed attempt last Friday to get together for coffee, Kelly and I managed to connect today, but it wasn't easy. She lives in the area of the coffee house, but I'd never been there. Being directionally challenged as I am, I should have checked on Mapquest or something, but she said the coffee house was in the Celebration Village shopping center. It actually was off to the side, so I wandered around for a while before finding it. Thanks to my habit of leaving early, I wound up being only ten minutes late to meet her! She apologized for not providing more exact directions, but I'm a grown woman. I should have checked the address and map.
Kelly is someone I met on the first day I started working for my prior university, nearly four years ago. She's still there as an affiliate, and she's working on her doctorate at yet another school. Sometimes when you meet someone, you feel as if you've already known that person for a long time, and every conversation you have is natural, comfortable. Kelly and I have felt that way. We aren't close in age--I have nearly 14 years on her. But that's true of many of my closest friends. (It's not because I am young at heart--it's probably because my friends are mature and intelligent.) She has one child still in elementary school, so we can't really talk about our children that much.
I guess to the outside observer, our commonality stems from our both being "full-figured" women. At least, Kelly used to be big. She had gastric bypass a couple of years ago and has lost over 100 pounds. It has taken me awhile to get used to her looking the way she does now. When we met, she was around 300 pounds, and now she's at 175. (She's a few inches taller than I am.) What seems so odd to me is her face. I'd noticed about myself when I lost a lot of weight on Weight Watchers (when my younger son was a baby) that my face changed most. It looked older. Kelly's face looks older, too. She laughed about the extra skin on her torso that she'd like to have removed, but she's waiting to have the time and the money and the courage. Oddly, she didn't feel as if it took courage to have gastric bypass, but she feels it would take courage to have a tummy tuck.
What I like best about Kelly is her openness. She is smart, funny, and dedicated to teaching. I'd like to think that those qualities are the ones I initially was drawn to, but I have to admit that often, the two heaviest people in any group will wind up befriending each other. That may have been what happened with the two of us during new-faculty orientation. However, I met another large woman that same day, and even though my office wound up being next door to the second large woman's office, we never developed much of a friendship. Kelly's office was in the building next door, and we almost never saw each other unless we planned to meet. Yet our friendship grew. We give each other support and strength.
That's what friends are for. Every time I think of one specific horribly failed friendship from my past, I can't believe I endured it for as long as I did. But to me at that time, friendship was like marriage. If there were problems, you worked them out. Friendship was supposed to be forever. I've since learned that the friendships made in childhood may be based on traits that change as we mature. Certainly, my so-called friendship with "EJB" changed--from bad to worse. She was always dominant, always "right," always judgmental. As we got older, she got even more judgmental, but only of others. Somehow, her own bad conduct was always excusable. She's one of the reasons religion leaves me cold. She hid behind Bible verses. If someone else did something she didn't approve of, she used the Bible to damn them. If she did something wrong, and believe me, her wrongdoings were many, she used the Bible to excuse herself. After I finally came to my senses (and it took EJB's attempted seduction of my husband to start that process), I couldn't believe I'd put up with her as long as I had. Now, whenever I think of her (and I still have nightmares in which she plays a central role), I try to feel sorry for her, but I can't. She's like the Pardoner in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. For the reader who doesn't pick up on that allusion, I can only say that Chaucer somehow must have known his share of people like EJB.
Today I got Jackie's birthday gift in the mail. Jackie is also a lot younger than I am. In fact, she's closer to the age of my older son. However, she's one of the people I know I can trust. What she says, she means. And she's never cruel just to be cruel. Because Jackie loves many of the same things I love--architecture, especially Mission and Craftsman; sewing; needlework; cats--I got her earrings that have little sewing trinkets on them, tiny spools of thread and thimbles. They aren't expensive, but that's okay. Jackie will like them.
There have been so many times that I've wished my brothers and sisters were like the friends I've made who have enriched my life. Instead of brothers who are football fanatics and never read books, and whose idea of "writing" is to sign their names to the cards their wives select and mail to relatives, why couldn't my brothers be more like Mike? (And why couldn't my sisters-in-law be more like Mike's wife Pam?) I know the answer, of course, and it's that I'm the one who turned out different from the others in my family. The oddball. The black sheep. The weirdo. There's not a one of my four siblings who has a clue about my life. I can't change that. I have to be who I am, and they have to be who they are. I love all of my siblings, but sometimes I don't much like them. Without doubt, they feel the same about me. Oh, well. It could be worse. Imagine how the siblings of serial killers must feel. Dr. S.
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