The sustaining value of friendship

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A few days before Thanksgiving, I stood in the Burlington, Vermont, living room of old friends and counted my blessings.

Nothing shocking or unique in this happy ritual.

And yet, the issue of “blessings” and giving thanks would have a different quality this year.

I found myself transported  to an earlier, less fundamentally challenging time. We were suddenly living in a world overwhelmed by uncertainty.

The reality of President-elect Trump still provoked moments of frightening disbelief.

Had we really elected a man without a shred of experience? Were we really making jokes about how he would turn the governing thing over to his vice president? Would that be a bad or a good thing?

Something had been lost, but for me, something regained:

Life itself – essential parts of it, parts that held it together, made it almost make sense.

Had it really been 30 years or so since these friends and I had talked?

Yes, that and many and more years. We’d been together for a retirement party five years before. We’d talked about getting together and thought about getting together – and then did nothing – not even a brief meeting as they drove through Baltimore on the way back from baseball spring training.

But now, here we were, picking up the strands of conversations as if begun the day before. I found myself re-introduced to the meaning of friendship.  It was sustaining and comforting and stabilizing.

Until that moment, I had found post-Trump solace in the idea that one deals with uncertainty by focusing on the doable, the immediate. I took one of our sweet, loving mutts to the vet. I trust him to do the right thing. It would not be his first rodeo. He and I would be in control. (Up to a point, of course.) That helped.

Days later I was sitting in the Vermont living room with my friends, Candace and Ham, talking about our kids, how many grandchildren we had, where they lived, what work they did.

We talked about skiing on Hillman’s Highway  at Tuckerman’s Ravine in New Hampshire. Ham skied. My job was burying the beer in April snow.

A year later, assuming the fine weather would greet us, we went back with our oldest kids. No sun this time, only a cold, punishing rain.

Weather changes. So do governments and leaders. Democracy demands a certain grown-up flexibility. Life, we hoped, would go on, though we had reason to question that bromide.

How could any leader function in this world without seasoning or experience?  Where would he get patience and perspective? Suddenly, we had to trust the seasons of other world leaders to protect us from our decisions.

My friends were days away from a driving trip to Oregon. Candace stayed back to deal with various logistics. Ham and I went to a classy French-Irish restaurant for lunch,

We settled in to catch up on 30 years of silence. He had become an expert in health care financing. That subject had taken him into the Vermont legislature, which he left after a term, frustrated with the pace of reform.

He had wanted to visit Baltimore and Johns Hopkins to learn even more about an issue that will confront our new president.

Three hours later we headed back to his house.

I returned to Providence, where he and I worked in the salad days of newspapers.

Other good friends and I were meeting there the next day for what we (and other similar groups)  call the “Geezers’ Lunch.” I suggested that such newspaper groups should come together nationally and incorporate. Geezers International could be like the Lions Clubs or the Rotary. We would need a cause, of course. Maybe literacy – or the sustaining value of friendship.

Such organizations would form a kind of national life ring.

It has ever been thus.

C. Fraser Smith is senior news analyst for WYPR. His column appears Fridays in The Daily Record. His email address is [email protected].