The "Comfort" friend is the person you call when you are feeling maybe a little lonely for family, a little nostalgic, a little down on your luck. She keeps you from drowning in self-pity by reminding you of the good things in life, but she won't smack you in the face with it and make you fix everything like the "Get Off Your Ass" friend might. She'll go to your favorite pizza place or that diner that serves those "hot beef sandwiches" with the gravy and mashed potatoes. You can call her to go to a romantic movie that your guy wouldn't be caught dead in, or would go to but would mock all the way home. She will give you wine and chocolate, but not in so much excess as the "Party" friend will. She will chat about the book with the good ending or shop for practical things. She will remember all the cool stuff you did with your kids and remind you how competent he is when your first goes off to college and you are so lonesome for him you can't think straight. She will remind you that he felt comfortable going to school many states away because YOU raised him to be that wonderful. She will look at your photos of the trip you took with the kids and say nice things about the destination and the kids. She'll go to the conservatory with you to see green things in winter and to the cool dark air conditioned movie theater in the heat of summer. She'll keep you in the middle, not forcing you into happy happy land, but not letting you sink to the inky depths of icy despair either. When you spend some time together, she will cause you to drive home content that life really is good in the ways that really matter.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The Comfort Friend
The "Comfort" friend is the person you call when you are feeling maybe a little lonely for family, a little nostalgic, a little down on your luck. She keeps you from drowning in self-pity by reminding you of the good things in life, but she won't smack you in the face with it and make you fix everything like the "Get Off Your Ass" friend might. She'll go to your favorite pizza place or that diner that serves those "hot beef sandwiches" with the gravy and mashed potatoes. You can call her to go to a romantic movie that your guy wouldn't be caught dead in, or would go to but would mock all the way home. She will give you wine and chocolate, but not in so much excess as the "Party" friend will. She will chat about the book with the good ending or shop for practical things. She will remember all the cool stuff you did with your kids and remind you how competent he is when your first goes off to college and you are so lonesome for him you can't think straight. She will remind you that he felt comfortable going to school many states away because YOU raised him to be that wonderful. She will look at your photos of the trip you took with the kids and say nice things about the destination and the kids. She'll go to the conservatory with you to see green things in winter and to the cool dark air conditioned movie theater in the heat of summer. She'll keep you in the middle, not forcing you into happy happy land, but not letting you sink to the inky depths of icy despair either. When you spend some time together, she will cause you to drive home content that life really is good in the ways that really matter.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
She? Why does it always have to be "she"?
because i hate that "he/she" thing and sometimes it bugs me to use "they-their" when you are obviously talking about a single person and well, "he" gets used most, so call it reverse discrimination.
truth be told, i wrote the thing as a talk that i wanted womansong to hire me to do but they want the one about "fat lady gets fit, gears up, and gos backpacking 50 miles" instead - so it turned into a blog series - so the intended audience was totally women. i'd still like them to let me present it, if any of you womansong committee members are paying attention - 2010???
What are these people, nutz? For every fat person that gets fit and goes backpacking 50 miles there are 50 people that need to understand this "friend" business. Not that there's anything wrong with getting fit and going backpacking 50 miles.
says chuckles, exhibiting a supporting trait of the validating friend. maybe you need to volunteer for the womansong committee and advocate for this topic? oh, wait, that gender issue will come up again, won't it?
Unfortunately. But it does raise an interesting question: is there anything besides the procreation process that the two genders can not participate equally? And, yes, my wife plays golf and will probably someday beat, er, outscore me. I can cook and do laundry with the best of them. She can paint and do plumbing. And, wonder of wonders, we can hang wallpaper together!
there are differences. but just because there are more men good at math than there are women good at math does not mean that the women that ARE should not have equal crack at the eduction and jobs. men are physically stronger, no question. but i saw an article about a landcape company of women and they ingeniously used simple tools to lift and move trees and shrubs like levers and tripods with ropes and pulleys - they then had the strength of a man operating a small loader but it all collapsed into stuff that fit in a small part of the trailer and doesn't use fuel and doesn't break down.
and yet, isreali newspapers edited out photos of women in government group shots. the rights of muslim women are insanely limited in backward places and debated as tho there was something to debate in their most forward thnnking countries, and right here, fundamentalists still subscribe to the 'submit' thing. we got a long way to go . . . some things that seem obvious sure take a long time to take hold . . .
Post a Comment