paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- moving beyond a work- based friendship Yesterday was a perfect fall day. Quinn and I went out for coffee and bagels in the early morning before she went to paint a house that her son Cary is renovating. It is fun to go for coffee someplace where people know you. Sometimes I wonder if that makes me boring, but at the same time, I enjoy recognizing people. And then I picked up my friend S. and her partner for a field trip. We piled into my little car and drove up north to a small town which over-dosed on quaint years ago and is full of tourists, galleries and shops. Our main objective was to visit someone that we both used to work with � the former atelierista at the university�s lab school. She left her job last summer, the last straw being the insulting executive director of the lab school at the community college who told a room full of early childhood educators that they were incapable of thinking critically. D. has a gift for inspiring young children to reflect on their creative experiences in the world, and is one of the most critical thinkers I have ever encountered in a meeting. After leaving the early childhood field, she opened a gallery in this small town where she sells photographs and soap products that she makes. Her stylish, hybrid shop is organized and fun. The walls are brick and she put up giant shelves made from unfinished beams for her framed photographs. We admired her most recent work from a trip to France, heard about an upcoming trip to Vietnam and chatted between the customers. As she sat on her church pew,she began to tell S. and I how twenty years ago she dated the guy who owned this building. She remembers scrubbing the bricks in this very store and at the time having a feeling that seemed to write itself on her memory. As she scrubbed a subtle-yet-queasy feeling rattled inside and she began paying attention in the way that people do when they realize that their current action is directly related to the future. There are some moments that, even while I live them, I know foreshadow something. Although what, I do not yet know. S. , A and I roamed through a few more shops. When the air stopped getting warmed by the bright sun, we piled back into the car and took the back roads home. I really like S. for a number of reasons. Before I knew her, I had to call her and ask for favors on a number of occasions and she was always kind. She agreed to moderate a table discussion about adult learning styles at a conference I was planning. She supplied countless press releases and brochures from which I have written many newsletter articles. Outside of work, I like her laugh. She loves to have a good laugh and for some reason, she seems to appreciate my incredibly dry sense of humor. She has a darling little stone house about eight blocks away that she has fixed up all by herself. And she has vast knowledge about the oddest things that defy any attempts to profile or type her. At lunch her partner pointed out that there was a saltine cracker in the sugar shaker and S. went into a long explanation about why a saltine and the various merits of saltine crackers versus rice to keep sugar from clumping. We both now have different jobs and are building a new friendship that is not based on work. We both mutually like each other as friends. But for some reason ours has not been an easy friendship to form over the past five or six years. I think it is because we are equally formal and equally observant. I wonder whether she has compiled a list of mental facts and observations about me that equal what I observe and remember about her. After only having been in our house once, and that time having been over two years earlier, she described the downstairs and our furniture perfectly. When we talk, I am aware that she retains much more of what I say than many people because, like me, I suspect that she has an excellent memory. Sometimes I think so much of the stuff in those mental files, at least mine, has to do with our former jobs, where I had a feeling that she was one of the only other lesbians in the field. Not that we had come out to each other, but in that other way of knowing. We finally discussed it after dropping enough hints that we were perfectly safe in doing so. I am really glad S and I are becoming friends apart from our former jobs. S. is Quinn�s age and her partner is younger than me, I think. I never thought we would be friends with another couple who have a similar age difference. That was quite an interesting moment. We met for the movies and S., after looking at Quinn, asked a very casual seemingly-related question about the movie Midnight Express. A question only Quinn could answer and from there, they had a short conversation that left A. and I out of the loop to establish that yes, they were roughly the same age. That moment reminded me of a Henry James novel, only vastly more interesting because it was my life�.. 8:32 p.m. - 2002-10-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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