A recipe for friendship

Back a bunch of years we met a couple in Nebraska who had a ministry that had both music and speaking. Both of them would sing and play the piano and the guitar and then he would speak an evangelistic type message. Marge and I loved to listen to them. We left Nebraska and went to ministerial school and eventually took a church here in Scott City. So we asked Tom and Karen to come and hold services. We hadn't seen them for years, yet when we met it was like we were the same friends as when we left. No uncomfortable pauses or quirks or anything like that, just friends. I saw a picture of them on Facebook the other day and there were our friends.

Back when I was at school in McCook, Nebraska, I met a guy who had just gotten out of a six-year stint in a nuclear sub. We had some classes together and after some time got to be good friends. And Lee even stood up with me at my wedding. Friends! Every now and then I give Lee a call and just visit about old times and the present day. Most every summer he would put out a small garden so we talked gardening. If we go back to Nebraska, I'd like to stop and visit.

But isn't that what a friend is? Someone you can be yourself around and not worry about saying something wrong or doing something stupid. Fact is I'm pretty good at both of them. Seems like my mind slows down but the words just keep coming, so I end up saying something that isn't quite right. But aren't friends there to kind of overlook these lapses of judgment?

They say if you want an honest answer to ask a kid or a drunk. One is too young to know better than to tell the truth and the other doesn't care anymore. But a friend is kind of like this as well. A friend is there to tell us the truth even when it's not going to taste real good and it may end up hurting our feelings. But isn't this friendship? I remember one time we visited Marge's mom, and she just bluntly told me I needed to lose weight. She didn't mean to hurt my feelings, she was simply stating the truth as she saw it. And I believe we were friends. Took awhile after Marge and I got married for her to kind of accept who I was and overlook my shortcomings.

Normally friends are of the same gender but now and then good friends will have a guy-gal relationship. Normally this doesn't work just because of the sexual part, but it can work. Probably one of my best friends was a gal. Just good friends. Husband and wives can be best friends, but it takes work. I think Mom and Dad were best friends. You didn't find one without the other. Lots of times Mom would go along and sit in the car and wait for Dad, but she made sure she was there. Probably bored stiff, but she wouldn't have stayed behind. Best friends.

Most of the time we make a lot of acquaintances or surface friends. We greet each other and visit and are genuinely interested in how they are doing, but that's about all it amounts to as friends. There is a special something lacking in the friendship. All of us are like this. We have a phone full of contact information like phone numbers and addresses and such. But then we have those special numbers, those special friends that are more.

Friendships can center around hobbies or vocations or interests. I have a number of friends who are gardeners. When we sit down to visit, we normally talk tomatoes and cucumbers and green beans and such. We also talk about the rainfall and the bugs. And even in my gardener friends there is a especially good friend. Also have friendships that are a result of roasting green coffee beans. I have some friends who will remain friends until time ends just because of coffee.

What changes the relationship to one of being best friends? I guess I'm not sure. There is an intangible bond between the two that goes beyond words and feelings. For me it takes time and tests and lots of visiting and commenting. It begins with them being just acquaintances and then one day they realize something has happened and it's more than just friendship.

Good friendships aren't there to provide us with services and benefits. I hate it when a friend or volunteer is used and abused and taken advantage of. That's not what a good friendship is about. If our friend is a mechanic and they help us with a problem, pay them back. Same thing if they are an electrician or a plumber or just someone to help us dig a hole. We needed a corner post put in the other day so our son came up and helped us out. What would have been a struggle for Marge and I took him no time at all.

I don't think we have the opportunities to make good friendships like we did years ago. We don't sit down and visit over a cup of coffee or tea. I can remember as a boy no matter where Mom and Dad went, they would end up around the kitchen table with coffee and some kind of sweet. Back then the most important room in the house was in the kitchen around the dining room table. That was where memories were made. Some of the best memories I have are around the old dining table.

We didn't have the distractions we have today. Back then there weren't any cell phones and all the other gadgets. TV wasn't that great and radios were pretty limited as to where one could listen. Even the quality of the radios wasn't much. Today the most important room seems like it's the room with the big TV and the games that go with it.

A good recipe for better, more lasting friendship would be to add several doses of time, a dose of coffee and a sweet, no cell phones or TVs, several picnics where we have cold fried chicken and potato salad, time spent swimming in some creek, maybe some plinking at prairie dogs, and the list goes on.