Rituals of Friendship
It has been almost two months since my last post, and I have been trying to carve out some time to write an article for quite awhile. Other priorities have been getting in the way, from spending my writing time working on my book, to planning my upcoming two month road trip, to sharing time with family and friends, to weeding in my garden, etc. etc. etc.
But potential blog topics keep flitting in and out of my brain and won’t leave me alone, so today is the day. I know my articles have a way of meandering endlessly, and I’m guessing that only a small percentage of you routinely get to the end on the first try (I’m imagining that it probably takes you several days, reading it in chunks until, thankfully, you finally get to the bottom of the blog). So maybe you’ve appreciated the break more than I have.
If you’ve ever wondered what my process is for writing my blog articles, this is what usually happens: My brain starts churning, and I can feel it filling, filling, filling, until I am compelled to sit down and write, at which point the dam breaks and everything that was jumbled in there comes rushing out. (I can hear you thinking, “well, that explains a lot…”) Working on my book and taking an online writing course has helped me think differently about the way I write. I’m working on paying closer attention to length, flow and quality of content, which are important if you’re trying to write an entire book that someone else might want to read. Blog writing is very different from book writing, but I believe there are overlaps in approach and style. What I’m learning in the memoir writing class I am taking will (hopefully) make me a better blog writer.
With all this in mind, I’ve decided to try doing more frequent, shorter blog pieces rather than wait until all my thoughts and ideas build up, only to spill out willy nilly into the blog. My goal is to be more thoughtful and organized, and not try to do too much in any one article. Those who know me well will understand immediately that this goal is aspirational and may not be achieved every time - just look at the length of this introduction…
Getting Through
We all have different tolerance levels for the challenging periods in our lives, and different coping mechanisms for recovering from traumatic events. Many of us don’t have to look very far to find the trauma and stressors that directly impact us. Others may be more distant from direct harm and can choose to look the other way from time to time, or just turn off the news. Nevertheless, the tragedy and suffering that is all around us, pretty much constantly, can lead to fear, anxiety, stress, and a whole host of other unhealthy emotions that threaten our well-being. We need to have a way that we can grab hold of the bright spots in our lives and savor them. Call it balance, call it equilibrium, but we all need it in our lives.
I am fortunate to live a privileged and comfortable life for the most part. I don’t have the same personal challenges that many do, and since retiring I have had the luxury of forging a path forward that is unique to me, and of my own choosing. I am able to shift and adapt myself and my lifestyle to meet my needs in the moment. My health is good, although my doctor told me recently that I now have “old lady back,” which was her way of telling me that I should stop complaining and learn to live with the aches and pains that come with aging. What is deteriorating in my body can’t be fixed and is a product and natural result of getting older. Damn!! Not ready! But I appreciated her directness and she delivered the message in a kind and compassionate way. Oops, I’m already digressing…
There is no magic bullet that gets us through tough times, whether we are dealing with something in our personal life or just trying to keep up with the horrible news bombarding us 24 hours a day. Compassion fatigue is a real thing, and threatens to undermine efforts we make to ease our own pain and that of others. How do we retain our sanity in an insane world? I believe one of the essential ingredients is meaningful connection with other humans, which many studies tell us is critical to our emotional, physical and mental well-being.
For me, I have been able to find these connections in random, one time encounters such as the ones I have while on road trips. More important, though, are the rituals I have in place with special people who have become important in my life. I’m not talking about the type of ritual we might find in a religious sacrament, but rather the kind that we create for ourselves and that have purpose, nurturing us on a regular basis. These personal rituals that support our health and well-being take work, intention, planning and follow-through. Following are some examples of what I’m talking about.
Up Close and Personal
When I was working it was not unusual for my colleagues to become close friends. After all, spending so many waking hours together every week lends itself to discovering compatibilities, sharing personal information and forming bonds. It is a natural place to find people you want to spend more time with. When the work ends, though, how many of us continue the connection? Or what happens when we move away? Or take a new job? When these job-based relationships get interrupted, often the friend relationship does as well. What then?
I am fortunate to have several people in my life that I am extremely close to and who don’t live far from me, which means I can actually see and spend time with them easily and regularly. A week rarely goes by when I don’t get together with one or more of them - walking our dogs, sharing a meal or a drink, going to a movie, or assisting with some task or other (like driving me 40 miles to drop off or pick up my van from the shop). These friends are my inner circle of confidantes and supporters, and I think it is safe to say we would pretty much do anything we could for each other, and we have.
These bonds don’t happen by accident or through chance, sporadic encounters. The ritual aspect of these friendships is the key to maintaining them. I’ll give you an example:
I met Celeste a couple of years before my retirement from Wayne State. She and I were brought into a grant-funded project and for the next two years we either facilitated, led, or participated in a series of meetings that were critical to the success of the project. We spent countless hours together every single week planning, strategizing, preparing, reporting, debriefing, and generally consuming this project day and night. A few months into it Terri joined us as our fearless leader who guided us the rest of the way to the point when we completed the final report and called it a day.
Celeste and I discovered early on that we had an easy compatibility and a similar work ethic that made it very easy to join forces. We brought different perspectives and experience to the project, but that only enhanced the collaboration. Over the course of the work the regard we held for each other grew and gradually (or maybe not so gradually - I think it was actually a version of love at first sight) shifted from the professional to the personal. When the project ended neither of us wanted the relationship to end.
Because we met each other rather late in life, relatively speaking, Celeste and I already had an independent network of friends and family as well as various activities and responsibilities that filled our days, and didn’t necessarily “need” another person in our busy lives. However, that thought never entered our heads. We agreed that we would keep meeting weekly just like we had been doing except that we would no longer need to discuss the project. Instead, we were now free to talk about anything we wanted. So every week she and I drive thirty minutes from opposite directions to meet at our favorite coffee shop, and have the standing date built into our calendars. Our former colleague-now-friend Terri joins us when she can and that completes our circle. At the coffee shop we often lose track of time, discovering to our amazement that we have been sitting and talking for several hours about anything and everything and nothing. Celeste often refers to our weekly meet-ups as “going to church” because of the impact it has on us each week.
Every week we part ways feeling refreshed and renewed. When we miss a week, we notice.
Celeste has an amazing ability to focus on the smallest of details. Here she is trying her hand at one of the many artistic endeavors she has explored (calligraphy, anyone?). I love the “show and tell” portion of our coffee klatches! Did I mention that she was also the officiant at Conrad’s wedding and has written a novel (as yet unpublished)? A woman of many talents to be sure!
My other close friendships are maintained with similar intention. Those of you who are reading this know who you are!! If a few days goes by with no contact, one of us “pokes” the other, usually with suggestions for getting together. If one or more of us are out of town we make contact every few days with a text, sending pictures of where we are, or a link to information we had been discussing recently, or just to say “hello, thinking about you.” As with Celeste and our weekly coffee, when my other close friends and I are out of touch for too long, we notice.
It’s a little cliché perhaps, but the ritual of this type of close, personal friendship is kind of like tending a garden. The more attention you give it, the more it grows and the more beautiful and healthy it becomes.
Stretching Across Lifetimes
For me, this one has to do with family, however one might define that term. Like friendships, family relationships take nurturing, but now we are talking about people we grew up with, or who raised us as opposed to people we choose to be friends with. For those of us in our sixties or seventies, that means we have known some of these people for a very long time. The rituals in place in my family are borne out of a desire to love and support each other no matter what and to do what needs to be done for another family member in any given moment. That kind of commitment takes work, and doesn’t come easily even in close-knit families like mine. There has to be a willingness on all sides to work through the hard stuff when it rears its ugly head, and I know that not all families have that. I am grateful and lucky.
When our parents died, my siblings and I had a conversation about how we were going to stay connected. Prior to that all the conversations we had together tended to center around first, taking care of the parents’ needs during their decline, and second, managing all the logistics of cleaning out their apartment and distributing their property and managing the final estate. Once that was all over we realized that we no longer had the same need to be talking on a regular basis, but did not want to discontinue the practice.
We created two different rituals to keep our family connected once our parents were no longer the “glue” holding us in the same space. First, we set up a text thread on WhatsApp. Included are the four siblings and all their children, plus some very special people that were “adopted” into our family circle by our parents, and with whom we did not want to lose touch. This conversation thread is extremely active and includes lots of what you might expect: a video of Matthew’s bees buzzing around their hive, Jean and Carol’s beautiful summer flower gardens, the latest accomplishment of Enzo (6 months old), highlights from Levi’s gymnastics class, or maybe a photo of the beautiful lasagna Conrad made.
My dad always had a vegetable garden no matter where he lived or how much space he had to work with. Several of their progeny do as well.
What’s the point of having a garden if you can’t share the bounty with your family? Even if it is just to show them how big your cucumbers got this year! Well done Elizabeth!
The extended family thread also serves as a primary mode of communication when someone is sick, has an accident, or when there is a special announcement (yay Conrad and Maria - I’m going to be a grandma!). The connection is real and personal, and even though not everyone is an active participant all the time (thank goodness or I wouldn’t have time to live my life), we are all “lurkers” and able to keep track of each other. The thread serves as an important touchpoint for each of us. Being spread out across Massachusetts, Austria, Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio, getting together in the same room can be difficult and only happens a couple of times a year, if that. This way we feel we are a part of each others’ lives, even if in a limited way.
The second family ritual is designed to keep my sibling group close. We are spread out among four different states and often go months between visits. It’s pretty rare for all four of us to be in the same room at the same time with no one else around. We decided that getting together as a foursome was important to us, so every Saturday morning we have a standing time on the calendar to Zoom. If for some reason a Saturday doesn’t work, we arrange a make-up time within a day or so. This is our time to do a check in, whether frivolous or substantive. We keep each other informed about our health, share what’s going on with our kids, and generally shoot the breeze about whatever happens to be on our minds, whether intense state-of-the-world stuff or trivial pursuits. We use each other as our own personal “brain trust” when we want to bounce new ideas or thoughts around. Our father suffered from multiple health issues, including heart failure, macular degeneration, hearing loss, and severe depression. As a result, we have a no-secrets policy with each other, and expect total honesty, particularly when it comes to our physical and mental health, a ground rule that we felt was important to spell out given our family history and vulnerability.
Planning a road trip together takes work, but is oh so worth it!
I have always been close to my siblings, but these weekly Zoom sessions have become - for all of us I think - a necessary part of our existence. We didn’t have the luxury for such frequent communication when we were working and raising our families. After experiencing the decline and loss of our parents, not to mention Jay’s illness and loss, we have become very dependent on each other for emotional grounding and support.
When family members don’t communicate regularly as a group, I worry that it becomes easier to drift away from each other without realizing it. The Zoom sessions aren’t enough by themselves, though. We have also become more intentional about making time to spend in each others’ presence, whether it is going on a joint vacation, camping, taking a road trip, or making sure we overlap around holidays. It is certainly easier now that all four of us are retired, but success still requires a fair amount of commitment, effort, and resolve. We lead busy lives, live in four different states, and our kids are even more scattered, but when we are able to pull it off, the rewards are great. We genuinely enjoy each others’ company, and when our childhood buttons get pushed, and those old frustrations and sibling tensions from years ago start to rear up, we work through the difficult moments and embrace the love. It has made us all stronger.
Our regular contact keeps us refreshed and renewed. When we miss one of our weekly check-ins, we notice.
Building New Networks
For me, personal growth and aging is all about accepting change with grace and resilience (even those *&&^%##!! aches and pains) and seeking out new experiences and new friends. In the last couple of years Celeste and I have been nurturing a new friendship ritual. Its success has surprised and delighted us both. It all started a few years ago when, during one of our weekly coffee meetings, she was telling me about an art project she and her daughter (who is an accomplished artist by profession) had led at one of her family gatherings in Florida. (as an aside, she has been leading art projects at her annual Florida family gatherings forever, which I think is very cool. It’s always different and it’s always a big hit and fun). One of the big differences between us is that Celeste is a gifted artist and creative thinker, while I depend on the spoken and written word and don’t easily think in pictures and colors. Celeste quilts, weaves, paints, and experiments with all types of art and craft endeavors (she’s also a fabulous writer, so she has it all). The cyanotype project she did with her family sounded fascinating, and when I expressed interest she offered to teach me how to do it. I immediately accepted the offer and we set a date.
I invited a handful of other people to my house for a very small “craft party” and we ended up with maybe 5 or 6 people. We had a great time making cyanotype pictures, and at the end of the afternoon someone asked, “so what shall we do next time?”
And thus began a series of craft parties that have taken on a life of their own to the point that I now put it into the category of ritual. I host and provide food, and Celeste leads the activity (I assist her where needed), which is different each time. I send out “save the date” emails and reminders, encouraging those on the list to invite others they think might like this sort of thing. In this way, my invite list has grown in the two years we have been doing this from the original handful to over twenty people. They don’t all come to every party, which is one of the characteristics that make it fun because it is a different combination of people each time and there are always new people joining us, invited by someone who has attended and wanted to spread the word. There is also enough overlap now that people who met at an earlier party greet each other like old friends when they run into each other again at another one.
There is no regular schedule. When Celeste and I have the time to plan and schedule it, I send out the email and we’re off and running. So far we have done cyanotype (twice because the newer members of our group had never tried it), weaving (using homemade cardboard looms), collage, and book making. Knitting, watercolor painting, and stamps are on the list for upcoming sessions, and Celeste is always on the lookout for new activities we can do in an afternoon that are easy to learn. We keep things affordable by using scraps when possible and frequenting our favorite thrift stores for supplies.
This is Taj.
He jumped into his cyanotype project with enthusiasm and his beautiful result is in the cover picture to this article.
What makes these parties successful? There are certain characteristics that I think lead to the same “refresh and renew” outcomes that my other friend and family support rituals provide:
They are intergenerational - at our most recent gathering of 17 people, the youngest was 4 months and the oldest was nearing 80, with all generations in between represented.
The craft is optional (dare I say it is almost beside the point?). Yes, it’s fun, and provides a distraction and something new to learn, but much of the time is spent sitting around chatting and eating. The buzz in the room is constant, from the moment the first person arrives to the moment when the last person leaves.
Food - always important! But I keep it easy. People can graze all afternoon, or not. Cleanup is simple and fast.
Easygoing, welcoming atmosphere. The people who come tend to be curious, interesting and interested, and enjoy meeting new people and learning new things. Celeste and I try to pay attention whenever someone comes who doesn’t know anyone. Our goal is to make sure everyone feels included and welcome no matter what.
Bring in new people from time to time. Word about the parties has a way of getting out in strange ways, which is very fun. One of the newest members of the invite list (if you come to one party you are automatically added to all future invites until you tell me to take you off), learned about it when one of our “regulars” met her while shopping at the local Salvation Army. Maria was new in town and didn’t have many friends yet, so Amanda invited her to the bookmaking party. I think she had a great time, and expect that she will be back when she can.
Keep the structure loose. This is not a class in the formal sense of the word. Even though Celeste is the unofficial “artist in residence” who is there to show and demonstrate what we are doing and answer questions, people are free to go at their own pace and do as much or as little as they like. They are also free to bring their own creative spirit into the room, like the time Conrad used a slice of bread for his cyanotype print. It came out great!
Meet Francy and Alicia.
Telling stories while waiting for their cyanotype prints to get enough sunlight.
Every time we have a party the participants remark about how much fun they had and how soul satisfying it was. It seems to serve as a much needed escape from the rest of the world, even if only for a few hours. Celeste and I keep the vibe relaxed and don’t put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be perfect. We always have a plan, but quickly pivot if we try to pack too much into one afternoon (two types of books were plenty, we didn’t need three).
I know from the feedback that the participants enjoy themselves and eagerly look forward to the next, which might be one month away or three months away. But it isn’t just good for them. It’s also good for me. I enjoy welcoming people into my home and watching the dynamics in the room as they circulate, chat, laugh, work on their craft, get snacks, and circulate and chat some more. Long after people were finished with their recent cyanotype project, they lingered and talked, played with the babies, shared stories and laughs, and didn’t feel in a rush to leave. For me that’s the sign of a great gathering.
Everyone leaves feeling refreshed and renewed. When we go too long between craft parties, we notice.
Meet Leela and Ezra. When we weren’t crafting or eating, we were playing with babies.
Next Steps
As stated above, I’m trying to be more focused in my blog themes, and a little more frequent. Stay tuned.
