How Do You Define True Friendship?

My son came home the other day and shared something he’d heard on the bus: “Friendship is like peeing your pants. Everyone can see it, but only you can feel it.”

This peculiar and somewhat amusing statement started me thinking about friendship and looking up different definitions. In my 1976 American Heritage Dictionary, the first definition of a friend is “a person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.” The 1977 Webster’s New World Dictionary first defines a friend as “a person whom one knows well and is fond of.” Wikipedia says, “Friendship is the cooperative and supportive relationship between two or more people.” Hmmm. Perhaps friendship is not so easily put into words.

When my children were little and learning about stranger danger, we talked about who were our friends. At that time, I defined a friend as anyone who had been in our home or whose home we had been in. That was simple enough for a child to understand, but after further consideration, not a definition to stand the test of time. Just recall the flap over Obama’s visit to the Ayers’ home and the ramifications during his presidential campaign.

My first childhood friend was Judy. We were in the same grade in elementary school, and we both had curly brown hair. In fact, people often confused us because we looked quite a bit alike. Sadly, Judy’s family eventually moved to the next town. We still got together for a while; then, as often happens, our get-togethers ended. But I still remember her with fondness. Just seeing her picture makes me smile.

Now my dictionaries are dated and definitions may have changed. I wonder how many ways future editions of American Heritage or Webster’s dictionaries will define friends and friendship. Someday, will a friend be defined as a person one exchanges “tweets” with or a person one links to on Face Book? I have a dozen or so “friends” on Goodreads.com whom I know nothing more about than what they’ve read or plan to read. At least we all share a mutual interest in reading and Goodreads.com.

I like to read about different friendships. Mystery series in particular often have friendships—or sidekicks—woven into the stories. Stephanie Plum has Lula; Myron Bolitar has Windsor Horne Lockwood III (Win). Even loner Jack Reacher has his band of ex-military police buddies who appear when he calls them. These characters do not always choose the same course of action or share the same beliefs, but they always support and respect one another’s choices and beliefs.

For me, true friendship is an intricate balance of respect, trust, mutual values and interests, shared experiences, loyalty, fondness, and acceptance. That’s the kind of friendship that never moves away. And it doesn’t come along everyday.

How about you? Do you remember your first friend? What fictional characters’ friendships do you enjoy? How do you define true friendship? And don’t tell me it’s the person who buys enough books for you to sell through :)

Day of Service

by G.M. Malliet

Is it just chance that my turn to blog is on Inauguration Day? Because it does seem fitting - we've had a front-row seat for weeks to some of the preparations for the inauguration. Rather thrillingly, we've had the Coast Guard zipping up and down the Potomac River in their fast boats, no more than a block from our house. Bridges into DC from Virginia have now been blocked (and didn't that go over well with the Virginians - we can't even walk across some of these bridges). Chartered buses have been jamming the roads for days now. We've had Air Force jets steadily circling overhead - we're on the flight path to National, so we've been declared a no-fly zone for private and commercial planes. (The sky, at least, is blissfully quiet.)

But it's also been weird. If I walk down our main street, I'm liable to be walking behind some guy with a Glock strapped to his thigh. Take the Metro, and there's someone standing there with a submachine gun.

We could be at war, but we're just trying to get a president safely into the White House.

A lot of people opted out of the whole thing and are spending the four-day weekend elsewhere. I wish I could tell you I am reporting from an undisclosed location, but in fact, in the end, I wanted to feel that I was a part of this occasion (although buckets full of gold could not induce me to be among the mobs of people standing around for the swearing in - we'll watch that on TV from the safety of either our living room or Market Square).

But it all makes me awfully proud - again - to be an American. When Obama was elected, people in Europe and elsewhere said how great it was that America was finally growing up. But ... do you see a lot of black or mixed-race leaders in, for example, Europe? Sorry, because I know this gets aggravating, but I think this is America - once again - leading the way.

I digress. The topic is the Day of Service. Yesterday, as a change from the siege mentality, and wanting at least to be part of the National Day of Service, we joined the volunteers of getinvolved.gov and local high-schoolers in helping clean up the grim shores of the tidal Potomac. George Washington's Potomac is a beautiful river, as long as you can overlook the plastic bottle caps, tires, and miscellaneous garbage that has accumulated along its shores. You would probably not want to eat any fish you might manage to catch in it. All this a few short miles from the White House. These terrific volunteers couldn't overlook the destruction of our natural resources any longer, and some time ago began helping the Park Service clean up the broken beer bottles, the construction junk, and the ubiquitous plastic.

Here's a small, tiny fraction of what they managed to clear in a few hours - see below. Incredible. Nothing more to say. Just: incredible that we let it get to this. I applaud our new president for getting more people moving on this day to help save our environment.

Obama has a lot on his plate - the economy alone is a fulltime job for a hundred thousand people.

Maybe if we help take care of the planet he can focus more on the rest of everything else.

The New New Deal

by G.M. Malliet

I'm in the Netherlands at the moment, and I can tell you it makes a nice change (speaking of change) to see how excited and happy the Dutch and all Europeans seem to be about this election.

Everywhere we've visited, it's been a variation on the same theme: "So, this must be an exciting day for you Americans!" The first time this happened my husband, confused and jet-lagged, replied, "Well, yes, it's our anniversary. Thank you." But we quickly caught on. The election has been followed here perhaps more avidly than in the US. Even though they realize and we realize change isn't going to come overnight, they see this election as a sign America is becoming more European. I hope they're right.

Universal healthcare coverage, anyone?