esrosedotblog

HERE COMES COMPANY!

I am more or less out of the blog business for three days.

My friend Lynda is coming to visit. From London.

I have known her closely for thirty and more years. We aren't sure.

We haven't seen each other in 5 or 6 years. We aren't sure of that either.

We are pretty weak on the stats.

In any case, it has been a long time. There will be much to discuss. Or not.

We e-mail every week to ten days.

She is driving alone from LA where she has spent the week with other friends. Hers. No mutuals.

We have pledged not to discuss how much we have changed or who did what to who when.

I have a good role model for the latter.

John had a long estrangement from a friend and then, recently, he called to say he would be in Palm Springs.

Both expressed amazement that they couldn't remember what had caused the separation.

I told John that I remembered and if he wanted me to, I could review it all when the three of us sat down to dinner. Well, the four of us. The husband was involved too.

But I was not asked to perform and I held my peace.

I think that it is difficult to keep friends for a long time. I marvel at the folks, like my friend Tom, who has childhood friends in place. But he grew up here and he is affable and gregarious. Characteristics which are not necessarily in my sling of arrows. Or maybe that is the problem. Arrows.

I have not stayed in one place. I gave up all my childhood friends when I went away to college. I gave up almost all of my family as well. Not my mother and father. Cousins and the like. So many. So far away in more than distance.

I have another friend who I have known easily as long as Lynda. We talk occasionally but don't get together. He is on his fifth wife or partner and things never work out when he is in that situation. We wait for him to be a loner again. Then maybe we can get to see him undividedly.

In-laws of friends, the wives and husbands and lovers and other friends, inevitably compete. Mine and theirs.

Somehow you end up having to like both to keep the friend and it rarely works out. I think that is because, in love, opposites attract and, since I like my friend and his stuff, the opposite would not attract me, by definition.

We have the same with other friends. They like John or not me or vv. In this case, with Lynda, John and she get along fine and we think that her husband is a good guy. His opposites to her are actually somewhat attractive to me. He is witty, urbane and quite blunt in his conversation. No circumlocution. A Scot. Great.

He is not coming for this trip as he has a week of golfing in Augusta in the spring. For a lifer at golf, there is nothing quite as sweet. We will miss him but we understand. She will leave here and drive to Phoenix to meet him for another sunny week away from London.

So there we are. She isn't here yet. She said 11-1 and there is no sign of her at 1130!

It will be fine. I can hold lunch I think. What are friends for otherwise?

Labels: life