When We Talk About Us

Letters to Six Friends

I recently listened to Marc Maron’s brilliant podcast interviewing a colleague., reminiscing the path and nature of their long, querulous, yet brutally honest and intimate friendship. I was both touched and inspired by the interview — you can see the how the two men’s lives intertwine like ropes through memories of joy, hope, despair, and sorrow. You hear their voices soften as they discuss the past and the journey that took them to where to are as people today, and how they are indelibly part of each other’s lives. I was also thinking of Rilke’s letters, how they have been and remain one of the most important pieces of writing in my life. I've given away more copies of that book than I can count. So I wanted to write my own series of personal letters to six of my closest friends in my life, as a tribute, a confession, and a bridge to walk on for the years to come.

So here goes.

Letter One — Peter

There is a photograph of you and Andie sitting on my bookshelf without a frame. In it you are smiling, back hunched, looking down, while Andie is laughing her full laugh, glancing sideways at you. The photo was from my wedding day. The frame had cracked about two years ago when I, playing fetch with the puppy inside the house, threw the ball into the picture, knocking it over into the staircase, where it laid in pieces. So I keep the photo, frameless, on the shelf, its edges curling due to the heat from the fireplace. Every once in a while it falls, and I walk over, pick it up again, and put it back on the shelf.

You and I don’t have many photographs together, each of us reluctant to partake in such obvious preservation of memory. We are both fairly private people, and if you would have told me a year after we met that we’d be friends, I would have scrunched up my brows, turning up the left corner of my lip in that dismissive sneer of mine, and told you we’d better get back to work.

I think it’s fair to say that you left no impression at all when I first met you. I think it must have been at the first Academic Rep meeting at Wharton, you with your quintessential stance of slouching halfway in the chair, observing, absorbing, analyzing. I sat across from you one time, stiff-backed and unnecessarily intense, and I remember admiring your calm. This quality of yours perpetuated through our friendship. Talking with you is like drinking a cup of hot tea on a frigid day, always soothing, and warming.

Sometimes I look at faces, and I think that certain qualities of our souls will emanate through our skin and change the way appear, to ourselves and to others, like light through leaves. Yours is one of kindness, benevolence, and generosity, nothing flamboyant or too conspicuous, rather in an inward kind of way, drawing others in. When we talk deeply, it is as if I find myself in a meditation room, intensely focused, yet expansive.

There are a few moments in our friendship that I've chewed over that you probably already know about — when you asked me to run with you for Academic Director, bypassing a friend and instead letting me know that I had the kind of presence, strength and leadership that would partner well with you; this show of faith still lights my way today when I am struggling, it has always been a source of strength for me. When I blurted out that I wish we were closer during your Total Leadership interview — which led to frantic exchange of emails, and long sleepless nights for me, wondering how I had missed such a great person in my life. Until that interview, when you asked me what I could change about our friendship, I had no idea what I was going to say, and I was surprised myself by the amount of emotion, pain and fear of loss that came pouring out. I remember being almost on the verge of tears and having to hold back, with real effort, so that I didn't cry in front of you. But then of course I did cry in front of you — when you counseled me the days before my marriage when I was confused and tearful and inwardly violent, telling me I needed to make my husband feel more secure about our marriage. You've always surprised me in being able to show me things about myself that I could not see, but even when I didn't know you very well I was willing to trust what you saw. I think that gives credence to how persuasive you are.

Let’s talk about your humor for a second. There are numerous moments I remember waiting for you somewhere in a coffee shop or study room and you walk in, large backpack strapped on, one shoulder rising slightly above the other, looking a bit dazed, like you had been thinking of something important right before you walked into the room and just remembered where you were. You smiled, but not often, and when you are not smiling it is an expression of quizzical curiosity that I often find set upon your face. Your jokes are the kind that make me both roll my eyes and chuckle simultaneously, whether you are describing an embarrassing, awkward social situation, or because you had said that you pictured yourself sitting in the corner and just judge people with an ever mild disdain as they walk by. The fact that you never wear jeans and is vehemently against doing so delights me still.

Remember when I visited you in London? We were at a pub eating fries and having warm beer when you said: “I just want you to know that I’m really, really glad you’re here.” I remember looking at my hand and thinking the bartender was too loud as I wanted to remember this moment. That trip was special for me, before you had Jonathan, we meandered through London like traversing through a book, but with the notes of your life in the marginalia. I remember sitting with Andie on the tube, gorging on Spanish Parmesan cheese (which I later tried to duplicate but only managed to end up with moldy, rock-like inedibles). At Canterbury, I remember feeling self-conscious as to how little history — how little of anything — I knew, as you gleefully recounted the death of Thomas Becket and King Henry II crying out “Who will rid me of this damned priest?”

I find it endearing that you have a strong, competent and kind wife who not only broadens your social circles, but who basically runs your life and takes care of your basic needs. Never have I found you more juvenile than when we were about to get on the bus and you had no idea where we were going, how much the ticket cost, or whether you had enough fare to board, when Andie expertly swipes out the fare, the destinations, and everything you needed to not look completely foolish in front of the driver. I remember you turning around, one foot already aboard, realizing you were way in over your head, and being rescued by your wife. I've never loved Andie more than just then.

The first day I arrived at London, I spent the afternoon with Andie walking around and eventually ended up in your home. That evening, you returned from your private equity job, outfitted properly in a suit, and greeted me. Then you went into the bathroom and closed the door, but both Andie and I could hear your humming from beyond the door. I think it was something sophisticated, either from an opera or Star Wars, neither of which I am familiar with. As your humming mingled with the sounds of water running from the tap, Andie turned to me and said, “He must really like you, he doesn't do that in front of just anybody.” I remember my heart expanding then and feeling almost strangely prideful, as if I had won a race that I didn't even know I was running.

Remember that time right before we graduated from Wharton that we walked to visit Andie in the zoo while she was working? We were on the bus and I remember asking you some bloated philosophical question about life and you responding with bemused exasperation that only I would spend days thinking about a question like such and then demand a well-thought out answer from you on the spot. I don’t remember what I asked — I’m not sure it matters, as every philosophical question is always too self-important at the time — but I remember your exasperation and how it made me laugh.

I still read over the g-chats that we had accumulated. The first chat I saved was our reflections on Iron Prof and what it meant to us. Among the emails too, was a poem you had sent me “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry, in response to a poem I had posted which you claimed was “apocalyptic and futile.” I've forwarded the Wendell Berry poem to many people now, at various moments in their lives when they needed peace, and each time I do so I remember you. It is funny that when we were working together you always claimed I was more organized, better at getting things done, motivated and therefore able to push you to be your best. I thought of you as more intellectual, mature, able to see the big picture — where you fault in laziness I make up for in anxiety, and I laugh at myself now for knowing I have all of the anxiety and neurosis but none of the brilliance of mind or character to back it up.

The truth is, whenever we hang out, whether it is your visiting me with Jonathan or my visiting you in London, or looking for you begrudgingly in my mandatory 15-minutes at Pub, which of course serves as a catalyst of anxiety for me, I find myself very self aware when I am around you. Many times I am slightly nervous, almost fearful that maybe I’m not interesting enough to be talking with you. I also then blame myself for always talking about my life and not hearing more about yours. I sometimes wonder if it’s possible for us to have the kind of long, languid afternoons where we discuss messily different things that seem to hinge irrelevantly onto one another, a maze-like path of conversing that you’re so fond of, rather than intense punctuated patterns of updates — just barely keeping present with each others’ lives. I don’t know, but I do hope so one day. When I think about it, sometimes it makes me sad.

One thing I would like to hear from you more is stories about your childhood. I remember one — I think it was at the Natural History Museum that you declared yourself to be a T-Rex. I've only seen a few pictures of young Peter, and would love to see more. I've told Tony that if we have children, I want our child to be somewhat eccentric — perhaps obsessed with medieval maps or something like that.

It occurs to me that I don’t really know you in your newest role as a father. As you know children for me are very alien, and sometimes I don’t know how to tell my friends that I have a hard time hanging Christmas cards of other people’s babies on my fridge. I think the first time I've ever held a child for more than two minutes was when you asked me to hold Jonathan. I still remember that, it was as if you were trying to bring out the maternal instinct in me that only you knew I had. However, what I do love is seeing my friends as parents interacting with their children. I love watching them engage with so much love and fondness, almost like explorers discovering new life. It’s hard to be cynical around a child, and I think that may be the part I am most terrified of, that I don’t know how this open, humbling experience of being responsible for another human being that you created, how that would mix with the guard, the defenses, and the angles and edges of my personality that I've come to sharpen and even embrace. For my face is not one of kindness in photographs.

I don’t know how to end a letter that is neither here nor there. I am re-reading and possibly revising and I still think I talked too much about me and not enough about you. Old habits die hard I presume. But I will say that you have and continue to be a very important person in my life, and that it would sadden me greatly if we ever lost touch, though I am sensitive to the comings and goings of friends into our lives, like wandering into a room and then out. Nevertheless I still have your photograph, and it is sitting on my shelf, waiting periodically to fall and then be picked up again.

January 11, 2015