Who Do You Love?

I've been thinking a lot about my friends.

The older I get, the more I realize how much of a life is made with the fabric of friends. Not in the big public moments. In the ordinary parts. In the things they say that stick to you, while standing at the stove or pulling weeds or walking beside you. When you don’t have much to offer except your company and whatever shape you’re in that day.

The Greeks had a word for this kind of love — not the big dramatic kind, not the romantic kind, but the friendship kind. They called it Philia. It’s selective, enduring, deeply personal - it’s love that shows up at the stove, on walks and in the garden. I like knowing there is a word for it (even if ancient).

One friend taught me something in the garden that was somehow about plants and not about plants at all. Leave the violets and fight the wire grass. Keep this. Pull that. Know the difference. It sounds simple until you are on your knees in the dirt, sweaty and annoyed, wondering how one small patch turned into such a situation. Which, honestly, is true of most things in life.

Another friend pops into my head, when I am tired, hungry, and deeply uninterested in making dinner, which is exactly when dinner still needs to be made. There is a special kind of drudgery to cooking when you are exhausted. When I wait to ask the important philosophical question until about 6:30 p.m., which is: why am I doing the cooking? (You’ve been here, right?) And yet there I am, staring into the refrigerator like it has personally betrayed me.

She is the friend who says, “Just boil the water, the rest will come.” And she is always right. Not dramatically right. Just quietly, usefully right. Boil the water. A pinch more salt. Start somewhere. It helps with dinner, but it also helps with the rest of life, which can feel just as absurd some days. Too many pots and too many decisions. Too little energy. And still, somehow, you begin.

There is also the friend who walks with me (or comes along even when I’m alone). The one who points out who lives in each house, who used to live there, whose daughter just moved back, whose trees are doing unusually well this year. I love that kind of knowing. We walk and talk and sometimes get dragged by the dogs, which is not dignified but character building.

On one stretch of my alone walk, I look across a field, but imagine another of my friends, as if we were heading off on some grand adventure. The ones we often take through new towns, often finding the cemetery to walk dogs, just trying to keep the leashes untangled and not get pulled into the ditch. That feels about right for this season of life too. A little reflective. A little ridiculous.

And then there are the friends you can call in the middle of the night. The ones who don’t require context or an explanation. They answer the phone, are you ok? My grandfather used to say you could count them on one hand if you were lucky. He was right about that, as he was about most things worth remembering.

I don’t say any of this in a grand way. I just notice it more now. How we are steadied by the people who know us in our daily lives. The ones who have seen us at our best and in our oldest, favorite tattered linen shirt. The ones who remind us to start with what is in front of us. The ones who know when to laugh. The ones who know when not to (and just might anyway).

Maybe that is what I have been circling around. Not some dramatic lesson. Just the fact that a good friend is part witness, part historian, part accomplice, and, if needed, part getaway car.

“Make new friends but keep the old ones. One is silver and the other gold.” One of the only things I can remember about Disney World.

I’ve been thinking about my friends a lot and feeling grateful.