My censor to self, the part that wants to sound reasonably smart, should’ve said friendship comes in like the tides. The sustained metaphor wants to hold, even though I’m stuck on cat tongues. Maybe it’s the vast ocean, or how friends are indeed like a ship, a life boat on a stormy sea.
Navigating the vagaries of life is hard enough as it is, and friends, laughing with them, even if for a moment, we leave it all behind. All the troubles and sorrows, the pain and suffering disappears.
Today as I taught my last class at the old folks’ home, I was struck by how deep the friendships had grown among us, without our even having noticed.
Our elders, some areyoung enough to be my grandmother, others are old enough to be my father, unlike the one I never had. But in this room, age has dissolved, and we are all one age between us.
Li says we are all like family sitting around this table. I know so much about each of you. We have traveled beyond the shore where student and teacher are forever divided. This is not casual garden-variety friendship. We have deepened with each other.
Sometimes I feel strange teaching my elders, but the young students I teach must think a vast gulf divides us as well, yet, we too are one. Friendship with 10-year-olds or with 90-year-olds is one thing. Unintentionally or proximity, it doesn’t matter in the end.
3/24/2007 Writers’ Group
