Grace and Friendship: Are We Old Enough Now?
Welcome new subscribers! You are here because of my friend Dawn (scroll down if you are wondering), who perfectly exemplifies today’s main topic. But at the end of my newsletter there are various other sections - some regular, some occasional - and because of Dawn and you, one of those sections will now be books.
Now that I’m 60, I’m finding myself changing in ways I never could have imagined:
I’ve stopped jumping forward from plank in yoga because it hurts my back. For a while I kept doing it because I was invested in being a person who jumps forward in yoga and it didn’t hurt that much. Then I took a bunch of slow yoga classes where we were specifically instructed to walk forward, and my back didn’t hurt at all. The next time I jumped forward and my back hurt, I thought this is ridiculous, so no more jumping.
I used to be The Friday Night Cocktail Girl, but I learned this week that the alcohol sensitivity I thought I might be developing is real, so no more cocktails for me.1 Which is also fine because at the low point of the stomach issues I’ve been dealing with this year, I vowed I would do anything to make them stop. Also I was worried that it was something serious. Alcohol sensitivity or colon cancer? Easy choice!
On the more frivolous side, I’m writing this on an airplane to a faraway wedding (more about that in a moment), and I am wearing sneakers. Which sounds uneventful, except I never wear sneakers on planes. I don’t know when or why I came up with this clearly self-invented rule, but it has been essential to my sense of aviational identity. However, I indecisively packed a lot of shawls and purses for this wedding, along with shoes for every occasion, so it made no sense to bring an extra pair of shoes just for the plane. Maybe I am old and sensible now?
I also realized this week that I have changed in a way that is all good: I am no longer insecure or judgmental in my friendships. Do I roll my eyes at persistent foibles? Sure. Do I get worried when I repeatedly reach out to a friend and don’t hear back? Of course. But overall, rather than generating anxiety - are they really my friend? do they really want to hang out with me? do I like them more than they like me? do I like them at all? are they angry at me? am I reaching out too often? am I not being sufficiently attentive? - friendship has become a site of grace, both giving and getting. Which I ascribe to two factors: texting and age.
The other day I texted Elizabeth, who is the mother of the bride at the faraway wedding I am flying to as I write. Elizabeth is a childhood friend who I fell out of touch with for decades. Then Facebook happened and we fell back in touch, largely through our mutual childhood friend Ann, who is my date for the wedding. Then we went on a great vacation, and Elizabeth’s younger child joined my older child at her college, and we introduced our older children because they were made to be friends, and here we are.
But where we are now is friends who can go without seeing each other or speaking for months if not years. Then one of us texts, or Elizabeth shows up in my neck of the woods (the wedding will be my first time in her neck of the woods), and there we are again, just like always.
I texted Elizabeth the other day, not because of the wedding, but because she’s a doctor. I actually have two doctor friends: Mary is a hospitalist who mostly sees dire situations and thus tends toward dire diagnoses, and Elizabeth is a family practice doctor who sees ordinary situations over and over so tends toward ordinary diagnoses. This distinction has taught me to call Elizabeth first when I have hopefully ordinary concerns like my stomach issues. So I texted her that my alcohol suspicion was correct and I was excited to see her at the wedding, and she texted me back, and that was that.
I know there is discourse about texting and friendship and part of that discourse is sadness at friendships reduced to texting and group chats. But I have lived in a lot of places so many of my friends are scattered, and both my scattered friends and my local friends are busy people, so the ability to text a photo or a question or an invitation - whether to make the quick touch that says I thought of you or I needed you or to set the wheels in motion for a more substantive interaction - is an absolute boon to our friendships.
Those quick touches were instrumental in getting me prepared for this wedding. When I was shopping for a dress, I texted Linda to ask if we could FaceTime so I could show her a dress I was considering that would need a minor alteration. Linda loves to sew and does all my sewing that is more than hems and patches. I’m not sure what I do for Linda besides lend her very specific baking pans. More grace in friendship: we give according to what we have and need, and if that is uneven (here’s the baking pan that took me 30 seconds to take out of the drawer and leave on the front porch for you vs. here’s the altered dress I puzzled over for a while and then finally took the time to sew carefully for you), well, that is grace in friendship.
I didn’t end up buying that dress, and I didn’t know where to go next, so I texted Abby. She told me where to go, then cheered me on as I texted mirror selfies of me in dresses until we found the perfect dress, at which point she was as happy as I was - as was Linda, when I sent her the final mirror selfie. A couple of days later I texted Marlissa because I realized I needed a black evening purse option, which I felt she would have, which she did. Marlissa and I have dinner and go to baseball games with our husbands, but mostly we text when we need something or have gossip about our shared nemesis (a public persona to whom we are lightly connected, which is to say not a friend). Then we catch up on everything. That is the nature of friendship with grace.
And the reason age is crucial here is that friendship with grace takes time. New friends are great, don’t get me wrong. Well into her 80s, my mom is the queen of new friends.
But grace only arrives when you have gotten past the effort stage that new friendship requires. When you reach out without a second thought or don’t reach out because you can’t right now or you don’t think to, and it’s all OK. When you know what your friends like and don’t like, who you invite to book events and who likes to lie on your couch, who doesn’t want to spend a lot and who is ready for a splurge, who sews and who has evening purses, who doesn’t call because they are a space cadet and who doesn’t call because they are depressed.2 That is when friendship reaches grace - and perhaps that is also when we acquire the grace to be sensible about jumping, alcohol, and sneakers…or whatever it is we need to adapt to.3
Book(s) of the Week
I knew for a long time that I should read Doppelganger…but I don’t do well with should when it comes to books. In fact, I’m the person who tells people to forget the shoulds. You think you should try romantasy because it’s the thing? Forget the should, read what you want! You think you should finish books because books should be finished? Forget the should, abandon the books you are not enjoying!
Along with the should problem, I am not great with idea-based nonfiction. Narrative nonfiction? Bring it on. But I am convinced that most nonfiction books about a concept or thing could and should be an article, and I’m rarely proven wrong. Except for Doppelganger.
Doppelganger had been sitting on the coffee table for at least a year when I finally picked it up, a couple of months into Trump II. And it truly explained everything. Which is why it is so justifiably long.
The doppelganger of Doppelganger is author Naomi WOLF, once a loudly liberal feminist who went off the antivax/pro guns/conspiracy theory/Steve Bannon/etc. deep end. This caused big trouble for Naomi KLEIN, the author of Doppelganger. I have to admit that I too was initially confused that Naomi Klein was now antivax, but of course she wasn’t. It was Naomi Wolf, with whom she had long been confused.
Klein narrates her history with Wolf, explores the doppelganger literature, takes a deep dive into Wolf’s deep end, and explores pretty much all of contemporary life to explain how we have arrived at this moment where our lack of control in the face of deep change and uncertainty - the economy, climate, technology, the pandemic, etc., et al - has fostered the rise of division (the essence of the doppelganger), conspiracy, and autocracy.
I’m not sure why I finally picked up Doppelganger that day, but I am glad both that I picked it up and that I didn’t pick it up until then. If I’d read it when it came out, or in the salad days of the Harris campaign…well, it’s not that I would have dismissed it, because it is so thorough and convincing, but back then I was still leaning hard into hope in a way that would have made me minimize it. And it is not to be minimized. Highly recommended even though it is long and took me many weeks - and many breaks for fluff - to get through it.
Special bonus unread book: I don’t usually write about books I haven’t read, unless it’s in a zeitgeist way. However, the other night I went to see Alison Bechdel who is on a book tour for her new graphic novel Spent. It was the best book event I’ve ever been to (and I’ve been to quite a few.) There was a hilarious book talk with illustrated powerpoint. The laughs were many and fulsome. There were pygmy goats (on the slides, not in the theater). There was despair and inspiration. After the talk, there were real questions (not audience member speeches), and Alison (we were all friends by then) answered them delightfully. There were some particularly wild incidents that may not be replicated at other stops, like the two people who had been in the same performance of the musical Fun Home and didn’t know the other was there, and Alison’s college friend Becky who was the first lesbian she ever met, but maybe if you go to another stop on the tour, you will have your own wild incidents. Highly recommended!4
Because we still deserve nice things…
Botanical gardens!
Because they are beautiful and educational and conservational and fun and welcoming, and Alison Bechdel said that to get through these times we need community and nature, so a botanical garden with a friend seems like a particularly nice thing right about now.
Last weekend we went to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, which were all that and more. There’s a children’s garden and a sensory garden and a hillside garden and a meditation garden and lawns edged with garden beds and an azalea and rhododendron garden and a waterfall and and a walk along the river and hikes through the woods and also trolls. But really, every botanical garden I’ve ever been to is nice.5
A little occasional wine may be feasible.
Are all of these people also me? Yes! Except for the sewing and the evening purses…
Very proud of myself for writing about friendship and not mentioning Corinna, except for that one oblique reference.
What I can say about the book is that the book talk made it sound great and Mary the hospitalist is halfway through and loving it.
Botanical gardens are so great! They were free in New Zealand, too. And I know some people are sad about friendships that exist mostly in text or group chats, but the ability to stay connected to people from different eras of my past is one of the great boons of modern life.
I love all of your posts, but of course, I especially love this one, because reasons.