Old Friends

 

Of all the things we aspire to have in life, old friends are among the hardest to get and to keep.  By definition, having old friends takes time.  And having true friends requires transparency.  Time and transparency are anathema to a culture that operates on immediate gratification and superficial appearances.  Consequently, most of us have lots of acquaintances, but few friends.    My wife and I were blessed to spend this past weekend with old friends that I’ve known for a long time, and I was reminded how blessed I am to have them.

Some months ago I had proposed to some former college classmates that we meet for a weekend of grown-up conversation.  It took some doing, but ultimately Toria and I were able to arrange childcare and drove up to Charlotte on Friday night.

Mark, Amy, Griff, Julie and I went to King College, a small Presbyterian school in Bristol, Tennessee.  At King I had two distinct groups of friends.  There was one group of guys that used smokeless tobacco, played cards until the wee hours, and shared my affinity for country music.  There was another group of guys with whom I would discuss weighty matters of politics and theology and who introduced me to alternative music.  Both groups were and are important to me, but they met different needs.  Mark and Griff were in the latter group.

Mark is sort of like James Bond, but without the philandering or penchant for violence… and I suppose I’ve never seen him drink a martini… then there’s the fact that he works for a bank and not an intelligence agency.  So, maybe James Bond isn’t the best comparison.  But Mark is athletic, erudite, clever and has great taste.  In the James bond vein, he acts sort of British, has a post-graduate degree from Cambridge and drives a cool car.   More important than the rest, though, is that he, perhaps more than anyone else on earth, gets my sense of humor. 

Mark and Amy married a couple of years after we graduated from King.  Amy is an accomplished physician.  Brilliant and beautiful, Amy seemed completely unaware of the degree to which the other girls in college envied her style and easy demeanor.  Mark and Amy are a wonderful fit and served as generous hosts at their beautiful, exquisitely appointed home.

Griff, like me, is a lawyer.  Unlike me, Griff has nary a trace of arrogance, guile or greed.  I can only imagine the thought process of an opposing lawyer dealing with Griff for the first time, trying to figure out the “angle” behind Griff’s apparent fairness, honesty and congeniality only to discover that underneath it all, Griff is fair, honest and congenial.  He is the most sincerely earnest person I know.  I can no more imagine Griff abusing his role as a litigator than I can Andy Taylor pistol whipping Otis.

Griff married Julie after they both completed their graduate studies.  I’ve known Julie the longest because we went to high school together.  Julie is infallibly sweet, quiet and has a figure that girls half her age should envy.  I forgave her some time ago for repeatedly rejecting me in high school.  As I said in an earlier post, I’ve always swung for the fences in that category.

As is generally the case with old friends, it took about 15 seconds for us to feel comfortable enough to start talking about the real stuff of life – ailing parents, career challenges, and various and sundry other personal challenges that are somehow made easier when shared with a sympathetic ear.  They have all warmly embraced my wife Toria, the only non-King alum of the group.  The golf, shopping and restaurants were enjoyable but ultimately unimportant backdrops to the connections and re-connections that happened over the weekend.  As is always the case with this group, we laughed a lot.  Griff knows his role, and gracefully bears a disproportionate share of the grief that Mark and I dole out for laughs. 

On Saturday night we stayed up late talking, playing the guitar, and singing with and for each other.  I have an all-too-rarely sated appetite for creating music, so the opportunity to play and sing for a captive audience was like cool water to a parched tongue. 

When it was time to leave yesterday morning I stepped past Mark and Griff’s attempted handshakes and went for the back-slapping hugs.  We promised to not let so much time pass before getting together again.  Maybe. I hope so.  But as Amy, Mark, Julie and Griff join the four or so others who will read this blog post today, I hope they hear and know the degree to which I appreciate them and look forward to our next conversation.  They are on my short and distinguished list of old friends, and I hope to keep them there.