My Cup Runneth Over With Friendship

The Traveler called me yesterday morning around 7:00, after determining that I had updated my blog and was, therefore, awake. He said, "I want to take you to dinner before you leave." "Sorry," I replied, "you're too late. There are no dinner slots remaining."

Last night at the concert, dear friend Maggie Kosinski said, "We must get together before you leave." I e-mailed her the three remaining breakfast-or-coffee possibilities.

Someone said to me, "Look how loved you are." And again, as I type those words, my eyes well up with tears.

The lovefest began with lunch yesterday. Laurence, an absolute teddy bear with an enormous heart and a sense of humor to match, is one of my favorite people in the entire world. We worked closely in Washington in the mid-80s on two different IBM projects. He moved to Tucson with IBM in the early 90s and we lost touch, only finding each other again in Tucson when I started this job in 2006. He pinged me last week to ask if I could have lunch before I left. He works remotely several days each week (Of course. As do most IBMers, she said sarcastically.) and said for me to pick the day and he'd be onsite, and pick the place. Anywhere I wanted to go.

We have a voluminous announcement on Tuesday, so my time at work is extremely precious. I asked if he minded just going to the cafeteria rather than going offsite to a restaurant. His response humbled me: "spending time with you transcends the place it's spent at."

For someone who was so convinced, to the core of her soul, as a child (brainwashed? hoodwinked?) that she was unlikeable, unloveable, almost intolerable, this outpouring of love from friends is like a long bubble bath with the lushest of fragrances. Soothing, comforting, rejuvenating.

I've worked hard to make friends since moving to Tucson. I came here eight years and one month ago, knowing no one, accompanying a fiancé who essentially made me his personal assistant and then emotionally disappeared. (Oh my God, that's the first time I've recognized that. He didn't want a lover. He wanted a personal assistant and gave me a big diamond ring rather than a salary. Damn. I got the short end of that deal!)

I joined the Tucson Alumnae of Pi Beta Phi and made wonderful friends there. I took classes in stained glass, mosaics, fused and slumped glass, lampworking, pottery. In every class I made friends. I began singing with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Chorus and then began working at the TSO and made wonderful friends, friends who will remain so across the miles and years ahead. I have more and closer friends in Tucson than I ever had in Washington, where I lived for 16 years. I'm sure part of that is the small-town nature of Tucson.

(My two years back at IBM has given me several wonderful friends who will remain so across the miles, but it's also given me professional recognition that I don't believe I've ever had before. I'm in meetings daily with people all across North America, and, as I prepare to leave next week, I'm hearing outpourings of acknowledgement and appreciation, coupled with outrage and despair at my having to find another job rather than just work remotely from my new home. IBM vice presidents are being copied on e-mails saying how much I'll be missed.)

But I've just been myself. I don't think my personality is any different here than it has been at any other time in my life.

When I was in my mid-30s and Tyler was about nine years old, I started noticing him as he was running around and just being a kid. I recognized so much of myself in him—the first time, as an adopted child, that I had seen any bit of myself anywhere in the universe. He was darling. It was as if I were looking in a mirror. Suddenly it hit me: maybe I hadn't been such a horrible child after all.

Likewise, this outpouring of friendship has made me rethink the fifty years prior to coming to Tucson. I'm thinking Mother got it all wrong. All that criticism, all those negative comments to me so deeply ingrained. Maybe they were all hogwash.

Hey, maturity ain't so bad after all!