'A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.' - William Shakespeare
A wise fellow, Shakespeare - not only the world’s best-known playwright, but expert in the human condition. He weaved this knowledge throughout his plays, whether the characters be master and servant, brother and sister, lover or enemy, he exposed the nuances of relationships in all his works; we witness their failings, we applaud their successes. He knew what made people tick. Master horologist in storyteller’s robes.
I myself have little in the way of practical talents - that has skipped a generation from Granny to granddaughter. But I do possess a mental patchwork quilt that has been developing for over fifty years.
Friendships form my patches. Vital components of a larger framework that shapes life’s odyssey: its richness and variety, its tendency to lead us on paths other than those we had envisaged, some welcome, others feared. My hodgepodge of memories: fragments of a narrative enhanced by others, over decades gathered and sewn together to form a legacy that is trusted and valued.
Clever hippocampus, its ability to store a pictorial cache of when an emotional response proved heightened enough to be added to the cerebral bookmark tab. These souvenirs are faded or chromatic, receding or embellished. They may not be accurate, it doesn’t matter; what is important is how that event made you feel.
How friends made you feel.
My zoetrope brain flashes during moments of contemplation, equally bright in joyous times as in turmoil. I summon up memories, perusing an existence peppered with friendships of great value, and one in particular. Times of adversity prompt reflection; I urge those snapshots to morph from sepia to technicolour, from Kansas to Oz.
Six shared years of school, over thirty since, continuously adding to my coverlet as we age, stitching embroidery that is our lives’ details - and connecting those collage scraps with strength, every stitch from a golden skein that is treasured.
My friend has a quiet fortitude where I would have negative despair, tenacity where I would be inclined to give up. She has demonstrated this as she conducts herself with dignity when life, of late, has thrown her curveballs unanticipated and transformative. She has not only caught those orbs, but lobbed them back, high out of the stadium on a trajectory that could join aligning planets. She is a warrior in fairy form.
I flick through a slide carousel of our shared experiences, the projections materializing at random in my head:
Ballet girls. We sit on dusty, coarse carpet tiles: her mum braiding my regulation bun while I pleat hers. four busy hands, interweaving. We sit like the chorus in Swan Lake, but no frothy white tutus, only black leotards. No wings, just interlacing fingers. My hairdressing efforts will likely need tidied up: I do not have her mum’s dextrous hands.
Camping with schoolfriends in a royal-blue-and-orange monstrosity from the sixties. We erroneously pitch the tent where a lamppost shines beacon-like through the plastic window. ‘I wish someone would put that blooming light out!’ my agitated friend cries. Beyond the canvas, an instantaneous indigo shroud. Six girls scream.
Four years of college, holding pen for aspiring adults, honing future careers, forming and developing relationships. A shared teaching practice that knocks our confidence, but builds up a bond, using humour and survival instinct as our cement.
Student parades: one year masquerading as Thomas the Tank Engine - there is nothing trainee teachers can’t turn boxes into - another, Wicked Witch to my Dorothy. Far too dainty and smiley to be wicked; she was never going to fool anyone with the green paint and stripey tights.
Saturday jobs: in shops a few premises apart, both chains now as defunct as the idea of being employed exclusively for Thursday nights and Saturdays. Sundays were for hangovers back then, not working. We occasionally meet in our lunch hour if overlapping allows. Years later, I would discover my partner worked there at the same time. Small world, even smaller pay-packets.
Narrowboat holiday - when I learn my friend is the foremost authority in stealing glasses from canal-side pubs. We crash the lumbering vehicle, curse the doorless cupboards and pick up splinters of glass from the galley floor. There’s an inventory and a deposit to be returned. My purloining pal turns cat burglar under the cloak of alcohol-induced bravado. We accumulate a variety of receptacles, unmatching but deposit-worthy, and far more interesting than the ones that became smithereens.
Flying to Galway on the tiniest plane we have ever seen. Tiniest airport, tiniest departure lounge. Tiniest confidence. Guy checks us in, same guy sorts the luggage, serves coffee, sees us off at the boarding gate, goes up the steps to the cockpit. Our widened eyes of horror. Please, don’t let him also be the pilot! We are relieved to note he is merely handing over paperwork - not driving. The nightmare continues: we are seated near a passenger in flasher’s raincoat carrying a violin case. Obviously, a gangster - the pre-flight vino deduces it so. My friend’s nerves scarcely helped by convincing herself the wheels have stayed up on landing approach. They didn’t… clearly.
We change, we adapt, we progress, we mature. We have careers, houses, partners, babies, children, pets. We have so much.
We have a connection that has lasted since aertex shirts and scratchy blazers.
My mental projector slows to a stop. There are plenty of free slots to add more pictures, upon which to reminisce with a chuckle or a teardrop.
My patchwork quilt is piecing together, adorned, reinforced. But that’s the thing about patchwork: it can always be added to.
I know who I want to bind it.
For she is stronger than she knows and twice as precious.