Our friends sidled up so close to us during a difficult year that we didn’t have much room to fall or fall apart.
Yes, we had to work to keep
our balance in the center of the mother-mourning, cancer-battling, job-securityseeking and other challenges. But every time we tipped to one side, started to
splinter, pals showed up to shore us up. And more than just steady us, they
made us smile.
Rowena’s diagnosis of breast
cancer in the fall pulled a rug out from under us. But as we tottered in fear,
a sudden host of medical procedures and outright pain in Rowena’s case, a
community of saint-like friends rushed in to brace us—in ways that took our
breath away. Our refrigerator was never so filled with yummy food, much of it
homemade. We had more child-care offers than we knew what to do with.
Friends—both close and less-intimate—gave us wigs, hats, helpful books. Our pal
Art, who owns SF Wash, stunned us by announcing he was providing six months of
free laundry service.
Rowena and I came to feel
embarrassed by the wealth of help. We knew a couple splitting up. Did this
less-visible trouble—no loss of hair, no chemotherapy appointments requiring
childcare—trigger as much support? I asked the wife of that couple, as she gave
me a bag of food, if she had enough assistance in her own struggle. She assured
me she did, that plenty of people were propping her up.
That conversation reinforced
a realization I had about the friend-aid fest. People can be extraordinarily
good. They come to each other’s side during hard times. Lean-on-me, trouble-me
talk often isn’t lip service. And this lesson made all the help a kind of
double gift. First, the food, the childcare, the flowers themselves. And
second, the booster shot of hope in humanity.
Who doesn’t need that? In recent
years, I have found myself less and less eager to learn about the news. This is
despite the fact that I was a journalist myself. And that for the past year
I’ve worked for an organization with profoundly hopeful vision. But as you grow
older and see so much strife in the world, humanity’s dark side looms large.
ISIS killings, free-speech suppression in China, Russia’s effective invasion of
Ukraine. It all can be deeply depressing. At times, it has left me less
optimistic about our species.
But maybe that gloomy
sentiment comes from paying too much attention to headlines. Or not seeking out
the positive. Indeed, this is a finding of much research on happiness in recent
years. The brain can be trained to notice better, more encouraging patterns.
That’s why positive psychologists—and spiritual leaders from many
traditions—focus on practicing gratitude.
I knew about this research.
Wrote about it, in fact. But the point came to life this fall. A positive
pattern about human nature was all but tattooed on our brains and hearts by
friends and family giving so much. We had daily reminders that people are good.
Or at least have better angels that are real. That slip from shoulders into
ears, inhabit human souls and steer them to do amazing things.
Amazing things like making us
see the world more brightly at a time I least expected it. During a year that
on the surface was defined by the dark news of death and disease, the goodness
of friends not only lightened our days but often made them feel glorious.
Among the radiant moments was
the time we got a mud-colored smoothie. Our friend Martina Jones had whipped up
two highly healthy smoothies, and her husband Chris arranged to drop them off
to me as I was finishing up work one day. These acts of kindness came on top of
others from their family—they’d given us a lovely orchid, hosted band practice
at their home every week for our son Julius and his two band-mates, and welcomed Julius into their Tahoe home to celebrate his birthday. And while you might think
it would be hard to keep up with the Jones’ on the generosity front, plenty of
other pals were! Food gifts especially flew in on a weekly basis from multiple
people—women in particular, it should be noted.
So I already was in a state
of It’s-a-Wonderful-Life awe at our friends when Martina’s brown smoothie
arrived. And its color said something to me about the depth of Martina’s care
for Rowena. I think of Martina as having a strong sense of style—her home is
beautiful and she’s always put together, even when she’s coaching soccer or
cooking up a dinner. A muddy smoothie did not seem to fit her aesthetic. But it
showed that she put Rowena’s recovery above any superficial concerns about
appearances.
That smoothie made me giddy.
Made my cup overflow with gratitude and faith in people.
When I told Rowena my
thoughts about Martina and the muddy smoothie, she pointed out a flaw in my
theory. Martina, Rowena noted, is super health-conscious. In that sense, it’s
not surprising that the former Stanford cyclist and current biathlon practitioner
would place nutrition over presentation. But before I could get too down over
my faulty epiphany, Rowena added some tidbits that made the story even better.
Martina, it turns out, had
researched exactly what smoothie ingredients mixed well with Rowena’s
particular cancer drugs. She’d taped a list of those promising plants on the
wall of her kitchen to make sure she’d do Rowena right.
So that muddy concoction was
an even clearer sign of how true our friends were. Truly being there for us, and
reminding us about the truth of human kindness.
Friends can be tricky. They
can smother you and get on your nerves. Or they also can abandon you at a
crucial time. Stand you up.
Ours, though, stood us up by showing
up. By surrounding us, steadying us, they helped us from collapsing amid
crises. And their charity cheered us in a way I never would have thought
possible.
