When I was a little girl, friendship meant we liked to play together. It meant sharing toys and playing mermaids in swimming pools. Into adolescence, it became about understanding. In the midst of all that teen angst, we sought out people who really got us.
Then you get older and they say a true friend is someone you can always count on, and you begin to really get that. Moving through the trials of life, it becomes important to have friends you can rely on to be there time and again.
Now, when I look on the friendships that really stand the test of time, I see that’s only part of the story. There are a lot of wonderful people in this world. Amazing people who will hold out a hand when you are falling. People who seek you out and shoulder your deepest pains. They will wipe up your tears and tell you what you need to hear. Not always what you want to hear – but what you need to hear. People for whom you might always feel grateful and lucky to have known.
But for me, true friendship comes when that trust goes both ways: when both sides open themselves to vulnerability, when both sides trust each other. True friends are people who stand by your side when the rest of the world turns on you, but they also come to you when the world has turned on them. Not only do they shelter you, but they come to you for shelter too. True friends shield and shepherd each other, coming together no matter which way the rain blows. It begins in a moment, but it’s a thread that can only be woven by the push and pull of each strand across time.
What is friendship to you?
The Rules
I think there is real power in the human voice, as flawed as it may be. And when the voices speak together, when you have a multitude of voices speaking, patterns begin to emerge and there you can begin to understand truth. So in the spirit of the personal narrative, I am hosting a weekly challenge every Tuesday morning, where I will post a topic (ranging from the banal to the intimate) and ask readers to respond. I would love to see everyone’s answers and how similar and different they all are.
You can respond in any way you choose. You can give a fictional response or a true one. You can use words, sentences, and/or photographs. If you have a blog, you can link it with Mr. Linky below. Please be sure to include “Tell It To Me Tuesdays” in the title, and link back to this post. Feel free to use the “Tell It To Me Tuesday” button available to the right. If you don’t have a blog, but want to join in, you can just leave a comment. Please follow the rules. I don’t want to have to delete links. I like links! Don’t make me delete them.
Next week’s challenge: Time
I don’t remember being particularly sensitive to smells when I was younger. But somehow – overnight it seems – my sense of smell became a sense I couldn’t do without. I’ve learned to use it when I cook, instead of taste tests, to see if a dish is just right. I know when cookies are done baking when I can smell the cinnamon and sugar emanating from the oven. I love the smell of rain in the air, but I hate the smell of raw meat and gasoline. I bathe in lavender and lather in coconut. I bury my nose in my husband’s pillow when he is gone on a business trip and I am missing him. 
But there is one smell in particular that I love, that always makes me feel like I just caught the scent of a wonderful secret: the smell of night-blooming jasmine. When I was growing up, there was a jasmine bush just outside my bedroom window. And on summer nights, when my window was open, its perfume would waft in and hover over my bed where I usually lay with a book and a flashlight, reading when I should have been asleep. For me, jasmine was the scent of stolen moments, escape and escapades into the inky black recesses of summer nights. Now, whenever I smell it, I smell night-time in summer.
What scents evoke memories in you?
One of the effects of becoming a blogger and of reading books from a deliberate perspective is that I am beginning to really believe in the power of the personal narrative. As humans we once carried knowledge, traditions, sense of family and honor through oral history. We told each other stories, and I think stories have the ability to convey really deep truths. Of course, we like hard data: facts, figures, statistics…and they help us understand reality and get a handle on complexity. At least in a certain way. But that is only one way to get at truth. I think there is real power in the human voice, as flawed as it may be. And when the voices speak together, when you have a multitude of voices speaking, patterns begin to emerge and there you can begin to understand truth.
