Moving Friend

In a few weeks one of my closest friends is moving to the leftern most third of the United States. If you’re looking a child’s puzzle it’s one of the ones that are big and blocky and really far away. I know this because I’ve driven across country six times and this is no day trip. I also know that physical distance doesn’t factor in always, such as in the case of neighbors who moved 20 minutes away whom I hardly see anymore. There are other, more subtle distances, which can account for space. There are connective tissues, effort’s twine, that may weaken and break allowing friends to float away, drifting off slowly on an ice floe labeled “busy”, everyone waving and getting smaller by the month.

            This friend will be missed. And not only by me. She’s been an inscrutable force in the lives of many, creating parties where none existed, coercing folks to put on a wig or get out on the dance floor, check out a band, or ride a mechanical bull. She’s forged a neighborhood where there might not have been one. And she’s taken in the strays, without judgment or expectation, opening her heart and home to whomever needs a pal or an ear, a drink or a nap, a bowl of cereal or a laugh. I know this generosity of spirit first hand and I can say without exaggeration that it’s changed my life.

            In my experience, I know people who found their friends early and are happy with their choices, so they’ve rolled up the welcome mat and stopped noticing potential. No need to look further. Then there are the folks who stick to their kind, which, out here means other married people. They like nice round numbers and knowing that everyone is spoken for—no loose ends or unpredictability. At the restaurant they want their husbands to have other men to talk man things with and not get into conversation with some wanton unattached woman who upsets the boy-girl ratio at the table. They crave a guarantee.

And finally, there are those who feed on exclusion, little thrills of being on the inside, knowing others didn’t make the cut. These folks find comfort in a fixed roster of friends, inside jokes, and endless references harkening back to earlier social events like a closed circuit. There’s a social currency exchanged between these insiders, whispers and nods, which for some brings a tiny buzz. It’s also predictable, cozy and safe.

            My friend who’s moving is odd in this respect. She’s open to new experiences, delights in them. And if that new experience comes in the form of a recently divorced mom, then great—the more the merrier. “We can always make room.” So she opened up her heart and home to me, scooping me up and taking me along to wherever she was invited that would be appropriate to take, for instance, a house guest. Always, it seemed, she said, “Just come along, they won’t mind,” which spoke volumes to me about her marriage—rock solid—and her friends, also open-hearted, generous people who welcomed a new person, a different face, a fresh point of view.

It felt European to me, this ‘join us’ mentality, or maybe it’s mid-western—she’s from Ohio. This generosity of spirit is certainly more Christian that many of the Christians I know, yet, she’s not religious so I know she doesn’t do it to get points. She couldn’t care less about even numbers and gets no rush from being on the list. I don’t even think her powers of empathy are so finely tuned that she understands implicitly how brutal it can be to get dressed and leave the house alone for the thousandth time, to show up alone, searching for a familiar face, hoping to find someone to sit with. Personally, I don’t think she thinks about what it’s like to live alone in a community full of couples. I think she’s just curious about people. It’s one of the ways she gets her thrills.

So she introduces herself to the guy who butters her bagel, the lady in the bra department, the haggler at the flea market, and stray cats, like me. She wants to know their name then a little bit of their story, not too much, but just enough to make each day a little different from that last. She looks everyone in the eye, and tells it like it is. When she has a party, the plumber comes. I asked her once why she thinks she might be so socially generous, and where she gets it. She shrugged and said that maybe it was her mom. “Everyone was always welcome at my house.”

Thanks to my friend who’s moving, and her mom, I now have a bunch of friends who’ve been coerced into trying me on for size even when they might have had all the friends they needed in the world, people who’ve given me a chance because she told them to. Her friends are my friends, and they don’t care that I’m not half of a couple. I’ll miss that she’s creative, funny and always up for a good time, but the legacy of inclusivity she’s leaving behind is beyond value. In her physical absence, I’ll think of her when I’m at estate sales, order her drink from time to time, and never pass up a theme party. I’ll vow to laugh off the small stuff, let go of the big stuff, and be as openhearted—especially to stray cats—as she was to me. Call it Christian, or generosity of spirit. Call it whatever you want. But call. Scoop someone up and ask them to join you. I’ll do the same.

           

           

Sip & Stroll

The thing about buying a house is it's a crap shoot. You can look up the taxes and ask the realtor about the schools, you can eyeball the neighborhood-- scouting for bicycles and basketball hoops-- and make note of the grocery stores. (Sidenote: I once met a couple who said they chose Maplewood by taking the train out to various towns within a certain radius of Manhattan and the counted how many SUVs were in the parking lot.) So people choose Maplewood/South Orange for particular reasons and then cross their fingers, hoping for the best. We did that, too, my ex and I.

We bought the very first house we looked at, the only one we ever walked into. I fell in love with the arched doorways and the breakfast nook so we put a bid on it and eight days later, owned it. Within weeks we were friendly with our neighbors and within months knew most of the folks on the block. A year later we were gathering on random Fridays for BYO cocktails to unwind together and let the kids run around. A different family spontaneously offered up their back yard to host each month and, tah-dah, Blocktails was born. An eloop was formalized, a sign-up schedule was set and before long all the kids on the block were familiar with each others' play sets and sandboxes, basements and bathrooms. We were borrowing hedge clippers, recommending dentists and unintentionally creating a neighborhood vibe usually only dreamed of, or contrived for television sit-coms. But ours was authentic-- and as it turns out pretty common for Maplewood/South Orange-- and we grew to appreciate it's value.

One year around the holidays, we laughed with neighbors about decorating our entire house with no one scheduled to see it. We weren't hosting and neither were they so we decided to have a little dinner-crawl one night-- with a different course at each of our homes-- so that we could gaze at each other’s trees and validate all the exhaustive trimming. It was a rousing success, and before we knew it, other families wanted in on the action so the Holiday Sip & Stroll was born.

Eight years later, we've tweaked and finessed the Sip & Stroll to what it is today: an adults-only tour-de-force of punch bowls and hors d'eouvres-- we decided that dinner was for sissies and that heavy hors d’oeuvres would suffice-- culminating in an orgy of desserts and kitchen dancing. It kicks off the holiday season and sets the tone, or in some cases, the bar for other parties to come and for those of us not working in a company milieu, it's the one holiday party we can count on to attend or host if we chose at less than outrageous expense.

Babysitters firmly in place, we meet at the first house at 6pm for 2-3 hors d'oeuvres, beer and wine, etc. and usually a specialty drink of the host's choosing. The lights have been dimmed and the dress code runs the gamut from sequins to blue jeans so that no one feels over or under dressed. We greet each other as we unwind, with genuine hugs and lipsticked kisses. We drink our cocktails and pop canapes in our mouths for forty-five minutes then an old hand bell is rung and we throw on our coats and head out the door, thirty five or so of us meandering to the next house in winter's beautiful, brisk night. We do this four times until we reach the fifth house, where dessert and coffee is served and if the party is going to devolve into a bacchanalian free-for-all, it's usually here and now that it happens. I'm not saying that every year someone attempts the running lift in the last scene of "Dirty Dancing," but I'm not guaranteeing it won't happen either. Suffice it to say, a merry time is there for the taking.

This year was very merry. Some say we may have needed more cheese and/or bread based fabulous fifties hors d'oeuvres. Others hypothesize that it may have been due to the gaily colored leis passed out at the first-ever Hawaiian themed stop. We had been so well behaved at the first two stops but when "Mele Kalikimaka" came on we carved out a dance floor next to the dining room. Some were nudged towards the chicken satay while others gravitated towards the umbrella'd Mai Tais which may have accounted for why the dancing continued at the fourth stop where someone hi-jacked the ipod dock and replaced refined Christmas music with The Pogues. We bounced around their living room like erstwhile ska enthusiasts as table lamps were clicked off and the music was turned up. When the bell finally rang, we danced out the door to the fifth and final stop, taking with us the punch bowl of Mai-Tai dregs that we had no-so-stealthily absconded with from the third stop.

Fully in party mode, we continued where we left off, barely noticing the change of venue or feeling the sobering effects of the evening's crisp, brittle air circulating through our lungs now weak with laughter. We continued to talk, eat, dance and laugh into the wee hours, putting any garden variety five-hour wedding reception to shame. We caught up with old neighbors and introduced ourselves to new, then considered what they might be thinking of our jolly band of revelers and if they would wonder later on if they'd made a huge mistake by buying their house or had happened upon their shangri-la. I slipped into bed full of gratitude that I landed on this block where some are willing to dance while others prefer to chat, but everyone's happy to be there and everyone's got your back.