friendship

funny thing about friends. your relatives are stuck with you, and if you're lucky, you get along with them all right. there's no doubt in my mind that i'm pretty lucky on that score. if you're really lucky, you might have one or two people you can call a close friend. for some people, that's a lot. i can't think for the life of me how i got so damned lucky, but there's a big bunch of people i can call close friends. i don't even know WHAT you'd call that. i think i'll have to invent a new term for that kind of luck. flucky? i don't know. douglas adams could probably come up with a good term for it. i'll have to think about it some more.

we used to rent this amazing house in the adirondacks on a small lake with about 14 of my friends. the house was built in the 1900's by a family from my area. their grandfather had designed and built this log house, a great camp as they call them in that neck of the woods. most of the windows were floor to ceiling and the walls were made of bark in one bedroom. it was like being inside out in a tree. the windows on one side reflected the light glinting on the lake and you could hear the loons calling sometimes. on the other side, the coolness of the woods surrounding the house cast shadows and brought a cool breeze to blow the curtains. at night, we'd all bundle up and gather on the dock to watch the stars. one year there were meteor showers. they looked so close that you could swear you could touch them.

all the furniture was real, original adirondack style furniture. even the chandelier in the living room was made out of birch bark. there was an ancient moosehead over a huge stone fireplace and squirrels ran across the rafters in the living room. all the doors looked more like barn doors and either had big latches like that or deer hooves. if you're a PETA member, you're probably cringing, but you'd never last on a real farm, so go somewhere else.

the adirondacks are beautiful to begin with, and the house is truly unique, but i could never figure out whether it was the place or the people i liked best. i had met this particular bunch of characters at a new year's party someone brought me to. turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. somehow, i had managed to get plonked down on a whole herd of bright, funny interesting people.

after i had infiltrated this bunch, i kept hearing about this magical place, spoken of in reverent whispers, usually followed by groans of ecstasy. i couldn't imagine how this place could be real. then, one day at a party, someone asked me if i wanted to go too. i looked around to see if they meant someone else. i felt like i was about to be initiated into some secret club. hell yeah, i'll be there! i was so excited.

when i got there, i saw why my friends spoke like that about the place. but there was so much more to it than that. i ended up in the bedroom right above the kitchen, so the first thing i heard in the mornings was the sound of laughter. is there any more beautiful sound? i can't think of any. i was an only child, so our house was always fairly quiet growing up.

each night two of us would cook dinner for the rest of us. they'd choose the wine or beer to accompany the dinner and decide what to make. we never had a bad meal. it was fun to be the evening's orchestrator of dinner, and you'd think the best part of being the one to make dinner was that you were exempt from doing dishes for the evening. but it was more fun to do the dishes, because everyone else crowded into the kitchen, put some kind of lively music on, and danced around the kitchen while they washed, dried, and put away. i hate doing dishes, but it was so much fun like that that i never seemed to mind.

each summer we spent the week together was different. people who were single got married, people who'd been married got divorced, people had kids, kids got too big, each time was a different permutation, but they were all good ones.

one year, we were living in an area almost as pretty, in a wooded area in the country, and i thought that it wouldn't be such a big deal to go, but we went anyway. i had lost my mom a couple of months before, and sad just doesn't seem to cover it. but when we pulled up the road to the house, there was my friend al smiling at us, and the world got just a little sunnier all of a sudden.

a long time ago, trust exercises were big in acting classes and some forms of therapy. you fall backwards and trust that someone will catch you before you land on your ass and bust yourself up. risky business, that. well, my friends and i have all been through all sorts of things, but the nice thing is that i'm pretty sure that if any of us fall, and we have from time to time, the others will be there to catch us. it's a nice feeling.

so i saw some friends from this bunch tonight where i work. they came looking for me, to tell me that they had just moved back to the area. i felt like a puppy wagging its tail. you don't have to talk to people every day to feel close to them sometimes, but it sure is nice to have them close by. people get so damned busy these days, it's a wonder you see them at all. but when you do, it's like you were holding your breath for ages, and all of a sudden you can breathe again and feel the blood pumping in your veins.

that's the wonder of friendship.