What say you, friend?

I had closed my eyes while she was talking. As usual she had a lot to say, mostly about things that either eluded me because they were scientific in nature or were just of no interest. She is a rather special person, admittedly a bit of an oddity given her interests and forthright confidence in her talents and undertakings. In the nearly six decades I’d known her, I don’t think we were ever on the same page despite the inordinate amount of time we had spent together over the years.

She was talking about something to do with things transcendental, naming names she’d encountered in her studies. (She did nothing halfway; she had always to squeeze every last fragment of knowledge out of her research). Truthfully, I wasn’t paying all that much attention as there wasn’t a lot beyond the odd “hmmmph” or “I didn’t know that” to comment if only for the contrapuntal sake of it. Perhaps unknown to her, I rarely paid a lot of attention to her latest flight of (much-researched) fancy. None of it – or very little – interested me, but we’d got along in basically the same relationship and assigned roles for so many years, it was just life, and comfortable.

Occasionally, she’d pause and ask what I thought or did I know some fact that had escaped her. I rarely did. Not that I’m devoid of interests or intelligence, but because I am a much different person in so many ways. She knew that about me, that I was actually intelligent and, no matter how many years it had been since I had nothing to contribute to her subject du jour, I don’t think she really ever realized I hadn’t a clue, nor was I interested. In truth, I believe she has always been so enmeshed and entrenched in the topics that so intrigue her and lead to her in-depth research that she just inferred from my silent presence and our continued friendship that I was enthralled, intrigued, impressed perhaps and was happy to let her hold forth.

Through the sixtyish years of our friendship, it was ever thus. I said little, though held very deep and passionate beliefs. I had a bit of my own accreditation in the subjects that interested me, but rarely if ever spoke of them except in passing. Sometimes, she’d be interested in my topic and thoughts; sometimes our lives aligned with ailing parents and mutual bemoaning and visceral pain that we spread, blanket-like, between us.

Today I just needed to close my eyes as she held forth, undulating from one aspect of her immediate interest, back to something she’d said weeks ago and describing the relation between the two, proof that her research was continuing. I wasn’t bored, nor annoyed that I was, yet again, the one who judiciously listened, never contradicting nor questioning unless it seemed appropriate to her tone or pause in flow. As I sat, listening as I had hundreds of times before, I realized that this sound, this drone of her voice – absent the actual subject matter she had co-opted for the time being – was one of the most pleasant things in my life. It was familiar, and hearkened back to a time before either of us had to face the challenges of adulthood. It felt cozy and reassuring, hinting at an eternity of our being in this relationship, the one that had withstood years of long distance, irregular contact, the odd disagreement or the annoyance I had sometime shown when the situation became too much. On a visit to her house, then in the southern U.S., I was selfishly displeased that she and her young girls had developed and fashioned lives and friendships where I had become the outsider. I didn’t much like that and, in a snit, fabricated a reason to leave and fly back to Canada so as my father could head off to Ireland where his father had just died. It wasn’t really fabricated. It was all true, except for my having to get back to Canada immediately to be with my mother. My nose being totally out of joint, I had to escape from the place I didn’t feel welcome, and the friendship I believed was slipping into the preserve of people I didn’t particularly like. Nor was I comfortable as the fifth wheel or ‘plus one’ in the newly-crowded sorority. So I, in my typical manner, quietly buggered off.

But as annoyed and hurt as I felt, assigned to the role of ‘friend understudy’, nothing in our relationship changed. She and her family bounced around for a few years as her husband was finishing graduate studies that seemed to stretch an interminable length of time, and it was only the odd letter and holiday card with photos of her daughters resplendent in Christmas finery that kept us in touch.

Eventually, she was back in Canada, though still at some distance. I visited a few times, but didn’t feel the same fuzzy familiarity as I had perhaps a decade earlier. At that point, I didn’t really count her among my friends. She seemed to have slipped away. Truth be told, I had very few friends, being awkward, anti-social and painfully shy, such that eliminating her from my diehard pals left me with only one friend. I rather thought my decades-long relationship with my old friend had run its course, and our ways would continue to separate ever farther apart.

Instead, she and her then teenaged girls moved back to the city where we’d met, attended school together and forged the first bonds of our friendship. By then, I had a sort of life of my own; for her part, she was one of many children so was back in the bosom of family. We were still friends, yes, but rarely saw each other in the way that life sometimes plots and dictates. And it continued thus through my wedding and giving birth at the ripe old age of 40. It seemed then that we would remain fond memories in each other’s past.

But fate had other plans. After she joined a women’s gym I, who had been obsessive with exercise – even what you’d call a ‘gym rat’ – back in my 20s and early 30s was readily encouraged to become a member in the same club.

I think that’s where our friendship gravitated back to its old comfortable pattern and now, a few more decades on, has created a magnetic pull that has been set in stone, well-established, unshakeable; it is something I prize and cherish.

She was still in full throat, shifting from the general to the specifics of whatever her topic was. My eyes were still closed and it was then, in that familiar mise-en-scene, I realized how much I love listening to her, even when I’m not really paying attention or in the least bit versed in the subject matter. She with her vast array of friends across the globe, and I with my two – maybe three – individuals I can safely call pals, no matter how much time apart, immediately settle into our pattern as if we were still the two high school girls who swore an oath as blood sisters, as we sat in the darkened restaurant her family owned. She was the braver then, actually wielding a sharp knife to make the small cut on her finger. To my shame, I could only manage ripping an already-loose cuticle, conjuring sufficient blood for the oath. I didn’t take it seriously, and wasn’t sure if she did.

Looking back now, eyes closed, listening to the ebb and flow of her voice, I believe she did take it seriously. It took me a bit longer but I, too, came to take it very seriously. And, thus, here we are. Still.