Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘friendship’

Dec 8

41 Comments

Friends Who Leave Us Behind

christmas ornaments, christmas ornament, gold leaf christmas ornament, broken friendship, upmarket suspense fiction, upmarket suspense novel, upmarket southern gothic suspense fiction, upmarket southern gothic suspense novel, andra watkins novelist

Life giveth; life taketh away. For the most part, life has been good to me. I have no cause to complain.

But, regret.

I have regret.

Navigating the waters of friendship has never been easy for me. Suffice it to say that I’m not the perfect friend. I try. I think I give a lot. At this point in my life, I wouldn’t call myself needy, though I’ve had my moments.

My biggest flaw, I suppose, is the inability to stop caring when it’s clear the other party doesn’t care as much as I do. Or, to adjust my level of care accordingly. I’m getting better. Growing. Evolving as an adult in that respect.

Still.

My life is littered with relationships where that wasn’t the case, where I kept on trying, investing, caring, long after the Sell By date. With a mature eye, I can still say those connections gave me something.

But.

When my emotions look at some entanglements, all they see is the taking. The need. The ‘me-me-me-me-me-me-me’ of every communication. The abrupt end. The manipulative shattering of a thing I valued.

I look at my gold leaf, shimmering on my big tree. Every year, I hang it somewhere prominent. It’s a great reminder to be more careful of the investments I make.

To avoid the people who do nothing but take.

To read more about ex-friendships:

Shredding an Ex-Friend? Good? Or Bad? 

Floating in a Sea of Marginality

Dump the Crappy Things an Ex-Friend Gives You

This post is part of the series Roll Out the Holly, about the stories Christmas ornaments can conjure. Click here to read the series from the beginning.

Nov 7

51 Comments

So Much Red It’s Made Me Blue

Being in love with someone who disagrees with some of your most fundamental preferences makes for a very broadening life; certainly on this day as much as any other, both Andra and I (MTM) feel a grave responsibility to live up to our hope that the rest of our country can manage to forge the kind of bipartisanship that she and I have committed the rest of our lives to.

Fundamental to our happy existence is learning how to have a depth of compassion for the pain of your opposite when your first instinct is to breathe a sigh of relief for your own good fortune. Especially when you find yourself at the precipice, on the edge of tragedy.

So it has been these last few days.

It all started on Saturday with a trip to Costco. As we shopped the broad aisles of that castle of capitalism, winding our way between boxes of bon bons and towers of toilet tissue, we came upon a bipartisan bonanza we could both agree on: a colossal coupon-less price cut on two products that stoked our particular passions–La Vieille Ferme for my Red wife, and Riondo Prosecco for my own White self. Yes, we somehow have managed a marriage detente even though we have exactly opposite opinions on wine.

Compromise. Such a profound concept, and mutually beneficial to boot. Of course we bought six bottles of Red and six bottles of White! After congratulating each other on our magnanimity, we completed our shopping and stuffed the stuff into the boot of Miss Mini.

Like Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve, Miss Mini was bulging with booty. Arriving in the parking garage at Cool Blow, we worked together to load it all up into the collective shopping cart to wheel it up to the condo. And that’s when disaster struck…

Yes, the fully loaded shopping cart went all Christine on us, careening towards the curb, and without looking back, took a half-gainer off the edge. We both watched as our bipartisan bottles floated in mid-air before crashing to the concrete. Like the crime scene it was, Red liquid quickly spread out over the surface, a giant stain waiting to be outlined in chalk. It was a landslide: every bottle of Red lay vanquished before us. The Whites did not escape unscathed, but survived in a spewing spray of sparkling wine; though the bottles were intact, the bubbly was blowing its bubbles.

Tempting it might have been for Andra to wallow in the lost Reds, and tempting it was to gloat over the survival of the Whites. But for the good of our marriage and as an example to our country, our response was unspoken and spontaneous: We spent the weekend squeezing every last drop of enjoyment from the dregs of our disaster, savoring the sparkling together, toasting to a better day when the rest of our country can manage to find our common ground.

Nov 3

37 Comments

Playing With It

I was thirteen. Or fourteen. Those hormonally challenged years all bleed together.

But, I was visiting my Mamaw in Eastern Kentucky. She took us to her country Methodist church. 10 people. No pastor. Met every fourth Sunday.

Of course, they had a piano. Upright. Out of tune.

Because they had a piano, I got volunteered to play a fancy piece for all 10 people in worshipful attendance. All of them were my relations, because, you know, it was Eastern Kentucky.

Mortified, I tromped to the instrument and banged out the right notes from memory. For close to five minutes, I made music the way it will sound in the hereafter. It was rapturous. I was so pleased with myself that I glanced over at the audience, and grinned like Liberace.

And forgot the piece. Every note evaporated from my dimwit mind, causing my diva-like, hormone-fueled emotions to spew buckets of tears out of my eyes, accompanied by lots and lots of wailing.

Quite a show. Everyone was so happy they got up for church that morning. Especially (not) me.

Fast forward to last night. MTM and I are in Beaufort, South Carolina for a Rotary event. District Governor Grand Poobah Ed Duryea and his wife Cindy are hosting us. Graciously, I might add.

So, when we walked into the house last night at almost 11pm, and Ed turned to me and said, “You play the piano. I’ve seen it online. You and Cindy go play for us. Right now.”……I did not feel like I could say no.

For about fourteen seconds, I regressed in my mind to those bawling minutes in the country church, before I sat down, took a deep breath, and played.

It’s easier to make mistakes in public when you’re older.

Isn’t it?

By the way, Ed and MTM insist that Cindy and I made no mistakes. :)

20121102-235146.jpg

Oct 25

38 Comments

What Are Investments Worth?

Anyone who has anything frets about the value of investments these days. Markets up. Markets down. Is the economy recovering? Or not? Is anyone, anywhere, really getting a decent return?

We all make investments. Every morning, we launch ourselves into the world, and we invest in stuff. All day long. Careers. Family. Extracurriculars. People. Whether we acknowledge it or not, everything we undertake is an expenditure of our living capital.

In spite of my training in numbers, I am not a very good investor. I am loyal to a fault. Once I care about something, I am prone to giving more, hoping it will turn around and realize the error of its ways. Give more to me.

If I gambled, I would probably be one of those sweaty, desperate people, sitting all alone at the table. Nursing a drink. Willing the cards to go my way.

What I’m saying is this: it takes time to make good investments. Slowing down. Reading the signs. Understanding when to throw out chips and when to stay. Or fold.

Sure, luck is involved in a payday. But, taking the time to know the table, to divine when to give more to the game. That’s really the trick to winning.

So I’m told.

Like I said. I’m not very good at gambling. Obviously. Or I wouldn’t have been crying.

For days.

I am shaking up my portfolio. Looking for investments that provide me a return; that will pay back what I invest. If you have the time, I’m in the market.

I promise I will do my best. Because, I know what it feels like when investments don’t perform. When projections don’t pan out.

When others disappoint.

Oct 22

48 Comments

My Boogers Are Green

When I was growing up, my neighbor down the street had a trampoline. It was a raised rectangle. Metal springs pinched when we didn’t remember our boundaries and landed on them. A host of childhood accidents waited to happen, especially since we usually used the thing in the dark and jumped as high as we could to grab the thick tree limbs sprouting overhead.

Yeah. That was childhood.

I forgot how much I loved jumping on a trampoline, until I reconnected with my five-year-old friend Joshua over the weekend. I barely hugged his mother Joanna, when he ran up to me with a fetching smile and said, “Will you jump on the trampoline with me?”

He didn’t have to ask twice. I decamped to the backyard and left MTM to be the adult.

I crawled through netted zippers and negotiated bumper pads, finally finding Round Springy Heaven under blue Colorado sky. With shocking immaturity, I squealed, “I bet I can jump higher than you, Joshy.”

“No you can’t!” He shouted as he propelled himself like a rocket, while I eyed the kitchen windows and hoped Joanna wasn’t watching. Instead, awful example that I am, I joined him. We pinged higher and higher, and I remembered what it felt like to be five.

Until Joshy brought me crashing down from that high.

“And don’t do a cannonball, either, because you’re too big. You’ll break the trampoline, and Dad will have to buy another one, and it will cost a lot of money, and he will be real mad.”

Joanna is a spectacular mother. She is tireless in her efforts to imbue her children with all the things they will need to be successful adults. It’s very hard for me to keep a straight face when a child says something funny, regardless of whether that funny is deemed a Teaching Moment.

The next morning, Joshy marched into the kitchen over breakfast and announced, “Mom. My boogers are green.“

Of course, Joanna adopted a parental poker face and tried to explain that his comment was rude. And, all I could do was laugh.

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 19,422 other followers

%d bloggers like this: