Friendship: More Than "BFF!" by Robin Minnick

I was born the youngest of five girls in upstate New York. I've lived in Maryland, Vermont, back in New York, in Nashville, TN and now in North Carolina. I have a love affair with words and with Christmas, and my husband and I come from a long line of elves. Not too surprisingly we seem to have founded a dynasty of wordsmiths and caregivers and counselors.

I have had varying amounts of success in writing, but I couldn't be happier than when I am devising a plot, revising a manuscript, or revisiting the chaos of the annual NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month aka November).

Friendship: More Than "BFF!"

by Robin Minnick 

 

Kaye raised the question recently about friends, friends who come in and out of our lives, friends who hurt us and leave, and just friendships in general. It raised a few more questions for me.

First, I'm one of those pain-in-the-neck friends who is probably too present when she's around, and not enough when there is distance between us. I completely believe in the philosophy illustrated in this sign. (Luckily, so do quite a few of my friends.)

 

This can be attested to by the fact that a number of my classmates have found me or been found by me on Facebook. -- and we still only talk  every now and then.

I've moved around a lot. As much as I've picked up friends in new places, I always wound up leaving a few behind. Even best friends. I may be a writer, but I am a truly lousy correspondent -- until email. After all, that's what phones were for, right? But I love email. Electrons are such cute little devils, and they seem so much more immediate.

                

I raised the question on FB -- but no one answered :( -- about how many writers had ever written about their friends in their fiction? Okay, it was a dangerous question. I don't blame people for not answering. However, at the risk that I'm putting my head on some sort of virtual chopping block here, I have. I've written about friends or used bits of them as characters for reasons both bad and good. Human nature being what it is, I daresay they will see what is not there and not recognize what is, so I think I'm relatively safe. Writing about them -- and my own past -- has provided fodder for the storymaker and ease for my soul in so many ways.

Going back to Kaye's question about friends, however, I do have a story to relate.

In the 1990's we made friends with the neighbors who lived behind us. Our only previous exposure to them had been when they built a bonfire in their back yard to get rid of a tree they'd taken down. I watched from our kitchen door, thinking what nuts they were to take such a risk. Later, the day we met officially, our oldest daughter trundled out her new twin baby sisters in a laundry basket for our neighbor to see. That zany behavior and the babies sealed our friendship.

We already attended the same church; their daughter and son were respectively each one year older than our second oldest daughter and our son; and we were fascinated with each other. Their family and ours fit together beautifully. We went through dance recitals, summer classes, card games, Little League, and children's choir together, Our daughters shared -- and got in trouble in -- the first combined grade 3-4 class our schools had. Actually, it was the two of us mothers who got in trouble, but that's another story altogether.

We talked writing projects. She was an educational director at a local historic site and an artist. Together we had ideas in abundance. In fact, we once discussed an idea for a book series that actually appeared a year or so later, but not from us.

The event that showed the culmination of our friendship had to be when we returned from a vacation to find they'd installed a gate in our back fence so that we could visit back and forth without going around the block. They placed a big red bow on it so we'd be sure and see it the moment we got back

A couple years later they moved, but only to a bigger house down our street. The friendship continued. There were other small disruptive changes; the kids changed schools away from ours, but it was to follow their own academic plans, so it was all right. Our friendship endured and grew with little more changing.

Until the dad was laid off. They had already seen us through one lay-off; now it was their turn. And the ax completely fell when the job he got was not in Tennessee but in Minnesota. With heavy hearts we saw them off, everyone being as brave as they could be, not admitting how horrible this was.

Despite good intentions, we didn't write or even phone as much as we'd planned. Partly because we were all trying to rebuild our lives without each other. It's one thing to lose a personal best friend. These were our best family friends, the only family we'd ever known who fit with all of us. They were also our youngest child's godparents.

I felt bereft. Never mind that I had an equal responsibility to maintain our friendship. She sounded so cheerful when we did communicate that I assumed all was well with their new lives. I was, we were, completely left behind.

They had a bad scare when their daughter developed meningitis, and we were in fairly close contact then. But as her daughter came out of the illness, my friend attacked her masters and teaching degrees, her husband moved along in his job, all our kids grew and attended college,

I knew I'd never have a best friend again. It was that simple. Friends yes, but my best friend was gone, along with the possibility of ever having another. I didn't even stop to think about the best friends I'd left behind at various stages of my life. We were still in touch. We all lived lives in different states. And we'd all grown comfortable with our separate lives. Somehow, this felt different. Maybe it was because this friendship was part of the roots we'd finally put down. All I knew was that it hurt.

And then along came Facebook. 

I resisted FB for a while. I'm no better at maintaining that than I am at other social environments. And I didn't want to intrude on what I saw as my kids' territory. However, Kaye here, and Scott Simon on NPR, made comments that made me see the sense of signing up.

I learned how FB could keep me in touch with family far away, even with members I barely knew. I made some new online friends through Kaye's referrals, and even a few professional contacts. Now my workplace has a page, and I'm in touch with people there. But I didn't expect to see friends from all stages of my life suddenly appear. Anyone with a FB account knows what I'm talking about. It is a wonderful way to reconnect with people you would otherwise never hear from again.

And that's how my friend found me. It was a cautious communications at first, but then our reacquainting spilled forth.

And I learned some stuff.

By this time, our family had been through the same trauma of changing states, ripping up roots put down over 24 years. We knew what it was like to come into a family community cold and have to make a place for ourselves. We're actually still working on that. I was in a better frame of mind to understand that moving took a great deal of energy and concentration, long after the furniture is arranged and the kids settled in the new school.

Still, what I learned startled me. I'd known about the daughter's illness. That had taken a lot of their time and emotional energy to deal with. What I had not known was my friend's subsequent emotional state. She'd gone into a depression, in part due to missing me and her life in our city.  As with all depressions, it took her a while to climb out. She had, and she was stronger for it, as was her family.

I read her story with both guilt and humility. While I'd been nursing my wounds in the city she'd left behind, she'd been enduring heartache. When we talked, she always regaled us with her adventures, so it had never occurred to me that she was suffering too. I, who should have known there are always multiple sides to any story, had failed to even consider the possibility. I had moaned that she was not here for me, but I was not there for her either.

Neither of us blames the other. We both know our own natures. And, I think we have recovered, at least for the most part. We are still lousy correspondents. We do, however, keep tabs on each other, and our families. We celebrate on FB, and we mourn together privately. It is, however, lesson learned.

I no longer assume I know what is going on in my friends' lives. I no longer take for granted that I've gotten the worse end of the deal in a relationship. And I look a little harder at how I can keep a friendship healthy.

Kaye could tell you. We seldom see each other, as we are at opposite ends of the state, and she no longer works at ASU where one of those twin daughters goes. I'm not nearly as good as she is about sending holiday cards or ecards. But we're in touch, and if one of us really needs the other, we're there.

So here's to success in friendship, and success in whatever you do, but most of all, here's to friendship!

***

I've sent pics before of my workspaces, in the car, in my office. Here is a picture of what is across from my workspace, in our living room. The piano in the corner hosts a variety of scenes. The Hallowe'en display recently ended. Here is our Thanksgiving tableau. Not sure what's up for Christmas.

Villainy Begins at Home by Robin Minnick

Robin Minnick is proud to say she's a friend of Kaye Barley whose Meanderings and Muses blog has graced us for just over two years now. Kaye, who as her fans know is no slouch as a writer herself, could classify as a patron of the written arts because she gives out so much in attention, accolades, and support. She is one of the many reasons Robin keeps at it, and one of the many reasons Robin has completed one novel (looking for an agent, people), nearly finished the next, and will work on a new Christmas story during November's NaNoWriMo. Robin lives in Fayetteville, NC with her husband and some of their children. Previously they lived in Nashville, TN, and they have family scattered, it seems, across the universe.

http://wordcatchers.blogspot.com/
http://www.blackwatertales.blogspot.com/

VILLAINY BEGINS AT HOME 

by Robin Minnick

Children and pets are great. And despite the fact that my husband practices being a curmudgeon on a daily basis (he’s planning on buying a dump truck when he’s 80 and driving on the highway crowding the passing lane at only 53 mph), despite his desire to attain true orneriness, he loves kids and animals.

The loving kids part is pretty obvious; we have six of them. One is married, one is working in New York City, one is fresh out of college, two are in college, and the youngest, who just turned 17, is a junior in high school. Possibly too much information, but I wanted you to get the picture.

We’ve always had animals, pets and otherwise, and at the heart of all of it you could find my husband.

There were the frogs that migrated into our backyard kiddie pool that we allowed to mature and hop on their merry green way. Only to learn the next year that some frogs are migratory when Dave discovered three of them trying to climb our driveway. This was followed by the bullfrog who made his way up the overflow pipe into the sump pump closet, living in the pool of water below. He stayed with us about a year, harrumping periodically. We didn’t know what it was until I opened the closet at an opportune moment. After that, in response to David’s remarks about ‘little green frogs’ and ‘burping frogs’, there hasn’t been a Christmas go by that he didn’t receive some kind of frog – including a stuffed one that sings carols.

Then there was the possum invasion that Dave was called upon to deal with. Starting with the adult possum that, upon a wildlife handler’s advice, we captured ourselves and released onto a local horse farm. Per the handler’s instructions, Dave suited up in sweatshirt and flak jacket and heavy gloves, pulled the 30-pound animal by its tail out from under the table, dropped it into a cat carrier, and slammed the door shut, avoiding with shudders the 3-inch sickle claws and vicious teeth. We removed two others, one that fell into a trash barrel, and another large one that, prodded with a curtain rod, followed a can of cat food into the carrier. Oh, and the babies! Six abandoned babies that tried to live under our house but kept crawling from the crawl space into the ceiling of our downstairs family room. Dave took to yelling “Possum!” every time someone went downstairs.  Including the time I landed on the second step, staring eye-to-eye one of the babies hanging from the pipes!

There was the stray cat who stalked us and laid siege to our house until we let him in.

Turns out my husband, who is the first one to complain about our numerous felines, had been slipping him cat food, because “Well, jeez, we couldn’t let him starve!”

There was the time he took our pit bull/black lab cross up into the unfloored attic because CLEARLY the dog needed to see upstairs. Freaked out that Domino might take off across the non–existent floorboards and come crashing through the ceiling, I dubbed this “Letterman’s Stupid Pet-Owner Tricks”. He could have made a mint off that category.

Most recently my wonderful man decided to see what our new puppy and our older dog would make of raw eggs in the shell. Our more mature dog dropped hers on the floor and rolled it around. It leaked egg, and she licked that up. Puppy, being puppy, ate the whole thing. Mmm, calcium!

But, you have to love a man who grouses and then gets up to take the dog out at 2 a.m. because even though it’s the son’s job, there’s no reason the dog should have to wait for a teenager to wake up. Who invests thousands in dance recital costumes and miles in travel to dance lessons and years later says he wouldn’t have spent it any other way. You have to love a man who will get his kids – and dogs -- up in the middle of the night to watch for meteors.

Kids and animals have long been a yardstick by which we measure the ‘good guy’ factor.

“He likes kids and pets; he can’t be all bad!” Even books have been known to follow this simple precept. How many bad guys have pets – other than working guard dogs or snooty sycophant cats? How many characters who avoid children turn out to be the maladjusted, crazed villain? So, maybe it would be a twist to have the cookie lady off the Scoutmaster for not awarding badges, or to have the animal rescuer systematically murder the members of the city council. And maybe a detective who genuinely dislikes kids.

I’m very glad my husband loves kids and animals. I truly don’t expect to see him committing foul deeds any time soon. But that doesn’t mean I won’t model a villain on him.

You wanted to see where I write. Well, one of the places I seem to do a lot of writing is in my car! Over the years I’ve had to do a lot of waiting. So I perfected the art of traveling ‘heavy’, always having some kind of materials for writing with me. Here you see the latest vehicle I use, along with tote bag, netbook, clipboard, pens, and paper. I’ve written in two different vans, a Datsun, a Ford Galaxy, and at least 3 Subarus. When I shop for a car, I definitely have to consider its ‘office potential’!

"There's a Family Story . . . " by Robin Minnick

Robin Minnick was born without a mean bone in her body. She had to work hard to develop them; her children would say she was reasonably successful.

She has spent the 24 years prior to the last 1 1/2 (you figure it out) living in Nashville, Tennessee where she and her husband spent most of that time partially raising their family. (They ain’t done yet!)

Before that she lived in various places including but not limited to – and not in this order – Brookview, North Syracuse, and Oswego, New York; Laurel, Maryland; and Winooski, Vermont.

She is sister to 4, wife to 1, mother to 6 and mother-in-law to 1 (that she knows of) and is a friend to all who don’t get on her bad side.

Her writing credits have as many ancestors as her friends and are just as colorful, in a minor sort of way, and with hope, one of her many irons-in-the-fire will light her proverbial star, allowing her to mix her metaphors with abandon and still expect her cake to come out all right. Even with run-on sentences and fragments.

She is very grateful for the existence of blogs as they allow her to live out her dream of writing helpful, humorous columns like those of John Maguire on the Albany Times Union in the ‘60s and ‘70s without having to worry if they are good enough to be paid for. For proof, see:

http://wordcatchers.blogspot.com/
http://www.blackwatertales.blogspot.com/
http://dreamweaver6.rjmdreamweaver.com/leavings/

In fact, Robin is working hard on finishing up two book projects and then will be digging up the courage to write synopses and go agent-hunting. (she suggests some of you duck!)

note regarding photos: "pictures courtesy dkminnick (except the boat; I don't know the source for that one)"

"There's a Family Story . . . " by Robin Minnick

There ‘s a family story that tells how my mother-in-law, on a family trip to Disneyland, spotted then-governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller. My future husband was in his early teens and could only look on aghast as his mother walked right up to Rockey, stuck out her hand, and said, “Hello, I’m Virginia, one of your constituents, and here’s my family. This is…” She then proceeded to chat with the Governor for ten minutes while her children looked anxiously for places to hide. I never did hear what her husband thought of it all.

It was, I think, this story that told me my mother-in-law and I had much in common. I was also fascinated by events, coincidences, but above all, connections between people. Mom was always on the alert for making a connection.

If she could make it in person, a la Rockey, so much the better, but even third-party connections were not below her.

If my husband’s brother was going to be in a certain city – he travels in his work – she’d pester him to look up her dear friend so-and-so who’d lived there for years.

“Be sure and call Eleanor,” she’d say. “She’ll have you over for dinner one night, if you just call her.”


Sometimes it was annoying because, as her sons and daughter pointed out, these were her friends, not theirs, and schedules didn’t always allow for extra personal visits. They usually ended up going along, however; it was just Mom’s way of connecting people.

If she wasn’t forging a connection herself, Mom was searching to see if one already existed. She had a knack for it. The first visit I made to her house, she quizzed me about my hometown. On hearing its name, she asked if I knew a Muriel H.

I stared at her. “Yes! She’s our church organist! I went to school with her kids, and she always looked out for me when I sang in choir!”

They’d been best friends when her husband was in college after WWII. In fact, Mom and her husband introduced Muriel to her husband. And she, my lifelong friend from church, had babysat my Dave when he was an infant. Does it surprise anyone to hear she was the organist for our wedding? Mom had struck gold again.

Connecting the dots wasn’t understood by everyone. Especially everyones who lived in small towns in upstate New York in the ‘60s and ‘70s. When I tried asking people about relatives or if we possibly knew the same people, I’d get puzzled looks that said “Why would you think that?” “What do you care?” “Are you nuts, or just nosey?” I was surrounded by people who didn’t care about any connections they might have to some other person I knew. While my need to know was thwarted, it was even more frustrating to realize these people just didn’t understand what I found so fascinating.

Fast forward in my life about 10 years. Dave and I married, and our little family (we had 1 child then) moved to Nashville, Tennessee. If you’re a Southerner, you probably see where this is going; bear with me.


Our first trips to church were marked by questions about where we came from and who we might be related to. “Do you have family over in Mt. Juliet?” “Did you grow up up North, or do you have relatives there?” (They always looked so glum when we admitted to being Yankees.) “I had a friend from Buffalo once; know anybody named Christantello?”

These people spoke my language! They were trying to place us, to connect the dots and see what our lives and relationships looked like. That similarity, the sharing of that little quirk of my own nature did more to make me feel at home in Nashville those first months than anything else. The longer I stayed, the more I grew used to the idea that the trait everyone I’d grown up around thought was odd seemed to be firmly rooted in the Southern gene pool.

I think it was in an Anne George’s Southern Sisters mystery where I first read this, but it rang true as Gospel when I did. Southerners simply love to connect the dots. They look for connections between you and them and the rest of the world, trying to place exactly who you are and how it all fits together.

Which takes it all a step farther.

Because, you know, it’s really a giant game of “What if?” What if your cousin is my cousin-twice-removed’s sister-in-law? What if my best friend’s brother kissed her full on the lips? What if, because of that relationship, his furious ex, hellbent on making his life plumb miserable, ran her down with a bass boat? And so it goes, with Southerners and other people of imagination, ‘what-iffing’ their way through the world.

Some of us ‘what-if’ our way through an outline or a storyboard and eventually put it all down on paper. Maybe it’s easier for Southerners to write because they grow up with all that incessant searching for connections. Maybe that’s why the ‘Southern Writer’ evolved. Regardless of place of origin, I can’t help but think that the best writers among us are those whose unharnessed imaginations are continually finding ways to connect the dots.

I’d love to someday feel I’d earned the right to join those ranks. Maybe, if I’m lucky, eventually I’ll have linked enough dots together to create a picture rich enough and vibrant enough to qualify for that right. Meantime, I have to ask, any of you related to Kaye Barley here?