I was expressing a desire for more meaningful friendships years ago when a therapist I was seeing suggested I meet another client of hers with a similar longing. She thought we might become friends.
The no-pressure way we would meet in this arranged marriage was in a small group working on mother issues. I actually didn’t think I had any of those but attended anyway to meet the potential friend.
We had all been told to bring a stuffed toy that somehow represented our personality. I’d made an aspirational choice, a guileless puppy for whom unconditional love is a dog specialty-of-the-house. As we gathered that first night, sitting in a circle on folding chairs in the therapist’s office, other participants were holding their avatars as well. Representatives included a stuffed kitten, one giraffe with big soulful eyes, a little raccoon… Everyone seemed to have selected a mammal of some kind, including the woman I’d identified as my potential new friend. Mary was lovely, but lovely isn’t necessarily friend material.
That’s when I glanced directly across the circle and locked eyes with a tall, stunningly beautiful woman who was staring specifically at me. Her expression was one of invitation—a look of intense hope and bossy possibility. It was the kind of stare that makes you glance over your shoulder to see who is standing behind you, for surely that’s the person for whom it is meant. If hope could be brash, if somehow an invitation could be a demand, that was the look.
Conservatively dressed in black slacks and a pale blue turtleneck, she sat clasping a green and brown frog with huge bulgy eyes. It was the only amphibian in the room. I thought, “That frog is the weirdest choice. That frog is hilarious!” And for me, both in friendship and romance, laughter is the love that binds. Two hours later, although I’d come to meet Mary, I left with plans to call Margaret.
Margaret was seriously yet invisibly ill, which trumped mother issues all to hell and back. And we became good friends though Margaret already had a small infantry of friends wanting to help her kick an insidious invader at least long enough to see her children grown. Which she did until she didn’t. No one can outrun a bullet forever. The point being I’m beginning to think it is true. There are people in your life whom you are destined to meet, even when you come to the party to meet someone else. Or you’re late. Or at the wrong party.
Whether you love them or leave them, stand by, or stand by them, may be the only choices you get to make. You only get to determine how that person is going to be in your life. Meeting, with a thousand potential outcomes, was a given from the day you were born.
It’s comforting to think I can’t miss the people bus. I can’t be on the wrong side of the street or late when the bus pulls away from the curb. I simply can’t miss running into the person who will alter the course of my life in a significant way because if I do, fate is going to make us board the same Delta flight a day later or wander down the same aisle at Wegman’s—even if it’s decades in the future in a distant town.
In my early twenties, I dreamed seven people were sitting around a large rectangular table discussing who was going to take what role in my life. “I’ll be the father,” “I’ll be boss,” “I’ll be the blind date she marries,” “I’ll be the elderly neighbor who leaves fresh camellias on her back steps every morning when she’s a lonely young bride whose husband has deployed to the Med.
I was watching this strategizing session without sound so I’m inventing the dialogue. But I knew they were divvying up relationships—passing around scripts as if in a play. Later I wondered, is it possible this is how it works?
The last time I saw Margaret, she was still gorgeous, sitting up in her family room while those who cared about her slipped in one at a time to say goodbye. Margaret was unable to speak by then but seemed to understand everything going on around her, and in typical Margaret fashion (universally and lovingly acknowledged to be opinionated and often critical), she had plenty to say; she just couldn’t say it.
I sat down next to her when it was my turn, leaning over the upholstered arm of her chair, and tried to speak for both of us, but I was in a foreign country without the language. As I recall, I opened with a comment about what I was wearing (gray sweater dress, suede boots) and what I guessed she’d have said about it! Margaret kept gesturing emphatically. Kept slinging her hands outward as if to say, “What? Wait! Do you believe what’s going on here? Say what I need you to say!” Be who you promised you would be to me before we were born.
And I could only think, But I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.
I think I said I will miss you. I will love you always. But I was so utterly lost I might have said, “See you Thursday.”
If I could talk to her now, I’d say, “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be your friend. Thank you for aiming frog at puppy. I was adequate in my role, but if you give me another chance, I’ll be so much better. In the years since you left, I’ve learned a little more about what I might have given. Let’s go back to the table—let me pick a different script.” In reality, I feel that way about everyone, not just Margaret. About everyone.
I wonder if before you were born, there was a table and everyone you would come to know in this life was seated at it volunteering to play a role: “I’ll be the brother who teaches him to play acoustic guitar,” I’ll be the sister who becomes a dentist,” “I’ll be the daughter who demonstrates parents control nothing,” “I’ll be the therapist who finds her a new friend,” “I’ll be the young mother who dies too soon.”
It took us a long time to get here, didn’t it? But there was never any doubt we’d arrive.
Since you are reading this, I must have been at your table, yes? And you, beloved, must have been at mine.
Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.
Elizabeth Heron says
But I really was at your table, that big one at St. Johns College, in your writing class in the1970s or so. Sitting with the Johnnies and the community members like me who wanted to learn about writing from you. And now I read your stories every Sunday, able to see and hear you because I have those memories. I just feel so fortunate Laura!
Laura Oliver says
Elizabeth, it’s lovely to know you were at the table literally! ( Although I didn’t start teaching those St.John’s workshops till nearly 2000. It just feels like forever —maybe because time is an illusion! Maybe because time doesn’t end. 🙂
Jo Merrill says
We have corresponded but have yet to meet. I look forward to sitting at a table with you one day. I do not have a frog or a puppy, but I just might be hugging a giant Eeyore.
Laura J Oliver says
I have no doubt we will recognize one another, Jo! And I look forward to it.
Joe Feldman says
Laura,
Wow!!
A truly beautiful and touching story.
Thank you.
Joe
Laura J Oliver says
Thank you for reading, Joe!
Joe Feldman says
Laura,
Wow !!
Such a beautiful and touching story.
Thank you for sharing.
Joe
Connie says
Wow wow wow well received ❤️so true if only be able have that conversation one more time🙏
Laura J Oliver says
Hold the thought, allow the vision. We don’t know so imagine the best. Thanks for writing.
Lyn Banghart says
You’ve done it again! Thank you! I would love to be at your table and for you to be at mine…. I would have taken a small teddy bear to that meeting. My mother-in-law gave it to me once when I was sick. She was not particularly empathetic or sentimental, so it meant a great deal to me.
I see that my friend Jo Merrill might be hugging her giant Eeyore. She is a very special person….
Laura J Oliver says
I’m sure you are both very special people. I look forward to meeting both of you someday–maybe in the here and now! Thanks for writing.
Carol Lyn Ashford says
Laura.. you have done it again and it is hard to say what you’ve done ! I actually have to prepare myself to read your articles which usually means the right timing, a cup of coffee, a quiet place and a very comfortable chair. Sometimes it even takes a few days to get it just right !!
Your stories always touch me deeply and I thank you for that. 💕 Carol
Laura J Oliver says
Carol, thanks so much for sharing that. It’s so gratifying to know you are reading these things I wonder about and wondering about them with me. You may not think we were at the same table but I think we were. Brief does not equal unimportant. And laughter is an energy that lasts forever.
Michael Pullen says
Your stories remind me of the poems by Hafiz, the same beautiful blend of art, craft, spirit and love. Sharing In relationship is how we come to know. Thank you for sharing your wonderful gifts.
Laura Oliver says
Thank you so much. You are more than generous in your comments.
Bettye Maki says
This is a lovely rememberance and a good life lesson. Our friends are so precious, I often wish I knew how to be a better friend.
Laura Oliver says
Me too, Bettye. Thanks for writing.
Chris Shea says
Margaret’s wisdom still comes to mind often, and my experience in her last days mirrors yours. I have a clear memory of what she wordlessly said to me, but I have no idea what I said. You put things into perspective so beautifully, Laura! Thank you!
Laura Oliver says
Thank you, Chris. We all miss her still.