A sudden warming of the weather has arisen Jennifer’s global warming anxieties, but we both had to admit that the higher temperatures, couple with the steadily increasing daylight, has improved our photoperiodic moods. Somewhat.
I cam home from work to yesterday and today to find she had made unexpected progress on a few home improvement projects that have been in the works too long. So that makes me content. I revel in the idea that our home has only gotten better in the time we’ve lived here – a happy converse from our time residing in apartments.
At work yesterday, I looked up at the calendar to confirm the date, and suddenly realized it had been 25 years since I attended a talent show, at a city park, held by a local Witness congregation. It was there that I met so many people that ultimately became my friends. It was also where two of my existing friends – Rhett and Ryan – performed a song of their composing. Rhett having since passed, I emailed Ryan to remind him of this anniversary. Or, rather, to tell him that this was the anniversary of his public display of his song “Balalaika” since, truth be told, there was no way he’d have any recollection of the date of that performance.
So after I got home and contented in the progress Jennifer had made, she said, “So you emailed Ryan some link today?”
“Yeah…how did you know that?”
“Because he posted it online.”
“Well he didn’t write back to me. I kept checking my email to see if he had anything to say about it.”
“Well, he mentioned you in his post. He said something like, ‘Thanks to my friend James for recording this.’ Then he listed all the times him and his brother played live.”
“Oh, we’re still friends?” I asked, half in sarcasm, half in sincerity.
This, then, precipitated a long conversation of what makes a friend, and exactly how long can go by without purposefully interacting with someone before they can be considered no longer in one’s life. This, then, connected to our placid lament that we no longer have any friends, excluding family. And “family” I define as all of her relatives, minus her younger sister, and none of my relatives, minus my younger sister. I told Jennifer that I had only been invited to two social events thus far in 2017 – one friend invited me to lunch and I accepted. Then I said, “But I’ve been invited to two events,” and told her how I had to turn down one of them because I had to attend class. Not to be outdone, Jennifer note that she had only been invited to one social event this year – one that she concocted at my insistence.