A Relationship That Helped Me Grow — My Best Friends in College
All my best friends are twelve years older than I am
They helped me get every good job I ever had. They also had the ability to make would-be thieves put would-be stolen items back.
I carried the trauma of the year I graduated high school and started college. Every month of my freshman year I compared where I was to where I had been the year before, and what I could have done to avoid what felt back then like the greatest failure of my life.
The year of regret ended when I successfully woke up on time to get to my friends’ church. The plan to return to church had started months before. My student volunteer group was affiliated with this particular church near campus. *neither my church nor my student group were the kind that harassed abortion providers or trans people. I disavow hate crimes and hate speech from Christianity*
I realized, as I was getting ready to leave, that it happened to be Easter.
“She’s an Easter-Christmas Christian,” my roommate announced to her boyfriend instead of asking me or having any empathy. That was a different kind of influential relationship.
Best Church Friends
I was still late to church. The music had started.
I met Heather while she was on door-duty, and she demonstrated how to be a good greeter.
“Hi, I’m Heather,” she said with utmost, genuine kindness. “You can sit with us.”
I might have told her then that I knew about this particular church because of the student group, and which friend had referred me. I assumed Heather was around my age because she seemed like the perfect best friend of my dreams. She had the same kind of hair and glasses and she was unapologetically nice — which is the only way to be unapologetically oneself while being apologetic. I’ve only ever heard “unapologetically herself” to describe people who enjoy offending others. Heather and I are not concerned with offending or not offending so much as with considering everyone’s well-being.
Then she introduced me to her husband, who had a name I’d never heard before, and I realized they both had to be at least in their twenties.
A couple of weeks later I realized they had a child, the first child I ever babysat. A couple of weeks after that, when she did a guest sermon, I realized she was pregnant.
On the first Sunday of each month, upcoming birthdays were announced.
“How old will you be?”
“Thirty-one,” she stated matter-of-factly. Her husband was — and still is — a few months younger.
As my understanding of their age stretched from being my peers to being a full zodiac year cycle older, (we’re all tigers. The best year animal) they became the ultimate role models.
They were top notch role models for me. They give me responsibilities but provided all necessary guidance.
It was not sink-or-swim. It was not coddling. It was not advice. It was like holding a baby at the surface of the water while she paddles happily. They let me watch their kid and didn’t shame me for letting him sit in a full diaper and watch TV with me.
“We were concerned for you having to sit by him when he was all poopy.”
“I’m insensitive to poopy smells.”
Then they showed me their way of putting the kid to bed. It never had to be voiced that I was doing it wrong. More importantly, even though I was emotionally stunted, they always treated me as an adult who was trying hard and would soon be capable of functioning like everyone else.
No other aspiring mentors have quite threaded that needle. Where I work now, supervisors tend to be completely uncommunicative or only interject to find fault with me, and local colleagues especially love interrupting me during class and making me lose status in front of my children.
It’s only on reflection that I realized what a good friends Heather and Wilkin were, for enabling me to learn with dignity.
I got years of experience working with children through being recruited to help with their frisbee camp, church family night and babysitting their children. They were the most compassionate athletes I’d ever met, and their support made it possible for me to be useful despite being non-athletic.
One time I turned down a babysitting night because I wanted to go to a party. Another member of the Christian Student Club agreed to watch the kids and brought them to the party. It was a Christian student party, so there wasn’t any alcohol and we all went home before ten-thirty.
I had the most terrifying moment of my entire life when their one-year-old (it was his first birthday, too) stopped breathing. I’ve written at least two blog posts about how time seemed to slow down and stop and all sound seemed to drag into an ominous horn as I watched the baby turn red, then purple, then almost blue. I remember seeing a toy car with its tires missing and thinking, he’s swallowed one or more of them!!!
The ever-slowing time felt like a running dream and there was a full age of reckoning between recognizing that I heard crying and the understanding that if the baby was crying, he was breathing and not choking on the rubber tire of a toy car.
“Why a’ you cwying, Miss Way-Cho?” The elder child popped the bubble of slowing time and reminded me that he, too, was there.
“Bwhehehehe”*ugly cry* *ugly cry* “He’s not choking! Bwleh heh heh.”
“Everything’s fine now…but a little bit ago, the baby suddenly stopped breathing. He’s fine now, but that was a scary minute.”
“Did he not get his way or something?” Heather reassured me. This was a thing, she explained, that this baby sometimes did. “When I put him to bed, I have to check and make sure he doesn’t do it.” She had also been terrified the first time it happened she witnessed it.
I had interrupted a church administrative meeting to tell her that her baby had turned purple, and she was on such a strong emotional foundation that she was able to comfort me.
Pick Your Battles
Heather was the gift that kept on giving. After she tucked the baby in and checked to make sure he was still breathing as she closed the door, we got to hang out for a bit.
“What about that sound?”
“Oh, sometimes after bed time the older kid gets up and plays with his toys in the dark. Then he falls asleep during the day.”
I saw this for myself when the older kid fell asleep on a swing, so I put him in the stroller and carried the little one.
“Why don’t you put the little one in the stroller and let the big one walk?” asked some stranger.
“Eh…”
My other twelve-years-older-role-model-friend praised Heather for her ability to pick her battles.
“Thanks,” Heather agreed. “I do pick my battles. People will try come up to me and say, ‘do you know where your child is right now?’ and I’ll say, ‘yes, I know where he is, I know what he’s doing and I know what he should be doing.’”
It’s the best reframing of childcare and childrearing, to accept that perfection is not the goal and utter failure is likely — and from there to pick battles. Knowing I saw Heather raising three children while getting her PhD and being active in the church is how I find something to hang onto. I’m normally expected to fight and win every battle all at once without causing anyone else discomfort. I’m not only not allowed to retreat from any hill, sometime I get executed on every hill and then ordered to fight for it again.
I rest on Heather’s wisdom for stability. She made it clear that I’m an acceptable human being worthy of dignity. Having that kind of stability makes it a lot easier to give patience and kindness to everyone else. Most people need tons of it, but are too proud to ask for it and have none to give back.
One of Heather’s secrets was that she had great parents, from what I saw. They, too, were overflowing with generosity and affirmation. Another was our uplifting, close-knit community. Finally, there was her personal faith.
I don’t have a good answer, or any answer, for those to whom church communities and religion have brought only suffering. I trust others do, though. It’s part belonging, part confidence in identity, part having needs met, and part feeling called to a purpose.
As for the other jobs they helped me get, and their knack for recovering stolen items, I guess I need a part 2.
