Bärli,
Sweet love, I have a lesson that is hard learned. I see you feeling jealousy about your best friends making other best friends, especially now that you are at a new school. Dr. Bell quote, “the only person that loves change is a baby with a dirty diaper.” You really hate it.
I smile when you describe your feelings (which I love about you) because they echo many of mine, sometimes. If you didn’t have that jealous feeling when another best friend meets the immediate needs of your bestie? I’d wonder if you were my child.
How beautifully human. How pure your love is.
When I was in undergrad, I remember telling someone at my church that I had over a dozen best friends. She looked at me and said, “they’re not really best friends, if you have so many. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality.”
Uh, wrong. The same woman, 20 years my senior, also told me that I turn my friends into family. Uh, correct.
Look, it’s not a statement of quantity being more important if you ever find yourself lucky enough to have many best friends.
As you know, Kermit and I have been best friends for almost 50 years. K&S have been my besties for a year. It’s not about quantity of years or friendships. DUH. DUH. DUH. It’s about finding these amazing people and understanding that the two of you are unbelievably lucky to know the good, the bad, and the ugly about each other. No, strike that – you love the good, the bad, and the ugly about each other. You’ve seen that person’s everything, so you gently ask/say, “should we ride at dawn” when battle needs to be done.
BUT, one thing that happens when you ferociously love, which you do, is that you want to be the one to hand hold. In person. You want to make sure that you see, with your eyeballs, your bestie is okay, their needs are being met, the situation is under control.
It’s human. It’s genetic. It’s understandable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson has a quote about friendship that impacted me years ago, “The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.”
I want to tell you a short story about two of my friendships and they are with couples.
You know your name and where it comes from. Geography tried to separate me from that core friendship and I’d say, though I don’t want to speak for the Big One, God simply wouldn’t have it. Many times, there was pain and suffering on both sides of the ocean and that continues today. The best friendships the three of us have (as individuals and I have with them as a couple) have been battered, bruised, twisted, healed, tested again, and bent – not broken. I ached everytime Godmomma or Godpoppa had their needs met by someone “on the ground.” I wanted to be there, providing the help. It wasn’t selfish. It wasn’t because I wanted credit or a title. It was because I love them so deeply. I want to heal hurt, celebrate triumph, create joy.
I couldn’t, many times.
I had to remember that the most important thing was that they receive the in-person love, support, joy…on their terms, at that moment. My love for them is strong enough to push through the jealousy I feel (not really of another person, just of the unfortunate CURRENT reality that I’m not able to teleport) because it is stronger than any other emotion.
The other best friendship is the one with LL and JL–. Bärli, there are stories that literally go back to the moment I was called “LaLa” for the first time (your beloved Ch). We knew each other before we became parents, as we were becoming parents, and as we’ve attempted to deal with being parents (Newsflash: the only cure for all three stages’ difficulties is Mi Cocina). We rarely get to see each other, as you know, even more rarely get to talk. I abhor my inability to be in-person to jump in the air in celebration or wipe the tears of sorrow. I don’t hate many things, but I have long hated this reality of our lives. My love for these two besties is deep. Very deep.
I have, many times, felt jealousy someone else was present for their individual and collective ups and downs. Many times. Having been blessed by the ability to laugh with LL as he was on tour or high five JL after a TV interview, I genuinely struggled when I could no longer do that.
I prayed about these particular friendships (again the individual and collective – we were a pretty awesome Three Amigos, in the day).
Prayer reminded me that there’s something deep when you know the roots and the leaves. These “best friend”ships were the ones that taught me the importance of depth. See, I am connecting to the generations up and down, with my LL and JL. Guess what? They are connecting to my up and down, too. I know the grandparents names from the kids and I have seen the grandkids make LL and JL’s parents shine from the inside. And, same.
Don’t worry about other people being your bestie’s bestie, bud. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Healthy and beautiful and unconditional love? We are blessed when there are many relationships with boundless love, especially our best friendships. Our souls need and deserve as much of that as we can get.
We don’t just nurture those with in-person activities. We nurture them with texts, with prayers, with a care package, with a shout-out in a speech that they may not hear, or in a myriad of ways to keep that best friendship alive. We don’t just show up when there’s rain, though we do and the umbrella is on point, we show up on the every day. I have always loved to see the school drop off routine because it’s just the ho hum. I remember one of Chah’s because he didn’t know I was coming. Seeing the route to pick him up was almost as awesome to me as seeing his face light up because, well, that was the everyday. Remember when Smiff did that for you once? Just the everyday.
That’s where you’ll excel – the everyday – whether it’s a good everyday, a boring everyday, or a scary one. You are a quality bestie, dude.
Relax your grip. They know who you are…and where you are.
And, they love you just as you are…ability-to-rearrange-molecules deficient.
