Whole friends

I made a new friend today. Her name is Rebecca. She is an art teacher who is taking a watercolor class at Cheekwood, like me. She got married this summer, moved to Nashville, and her husband started law school. That's a lot all at once.

They live in an apartment with a working fireplace and she has been looking for a job as an art teacher. Those are hard to find -- working fireplaces and jobs as art teachers.

We settled down on some benches in the Japanese garden to paint on a day when looking up through the ginkgo leaves at the sharp blue sky would make you catch your breath. When the chill of the night air had driven you under the covers for your best sleep in weeks and the bright sun the next morning twanged and throbbed like an amplifier on high.

We talked about a surprising aspect of starting your married life. How you have to figure out how to be alone more than you have to learn how to be together. Especially when your husband is driven and a hard worker -- very attractive traits! But how do you support him and be with him and miss him at the same time?

"Bless your heart," I said. And I meant it. My own heart could feel that mixture of love and longing and loneliness. Because I have been there.

You can see her sweet spirit in this photograph. While Rebecca painted, a young girl stepped over the rail and joined her. The girl's mother can be seen admonishing the child. But Rebecca was calm and welcoming. Any school would be lucky to have her as a teacher!

While I bent over my study of ginkgo leaves and Rebecca tackled a larger landscape, I remembered the early days of my marriage. In rapid succession, I finished college, got married, moved to Nashville, set out for my first real job, and my husband started medical school. I went from sleeping with stuffed animals in a dorm room to working as a night supervisor in a busy newsroom. Casting about for things to occupy me in the day, I swam laps in the pool. Volunteered at the hospital. Took walks. Made friends with other medical spouses. There weren't many of us and none of us had money. But we organized simple gatherings -- playing board games and drinking cheap beer and laughing. Classmates who weren't married dropped by our apartment at mealtimes, even though I wasn't a very good cook. These were bright people and we talked of things like cinematography. People said, "You will remember these as some of the best times of your life." That is true.

Rebecca came and sat nearer to me and I shared my watercolor pencils. A set of them cost $30 and when I bought them I felt grateful that I could afford them. In our newly married life, we could afford to go out to dinner once every year, on our anniversary. I knew it was the same for Rebecca.

Her mother was coming to visit next week, she told me, and she couldn't wait to show her mom around town and spend time with her. That's when I realized that perhaps I reminded her of her mother. After all, I'm old enough. For the first time, that sort of realization passed over me like a warm breeze, rather than a sharp prick of selfish grief. Perhaps it was the influence of the Japanese garden with its winding, carefully tended paths that remind us to meander and enjoy and wonder and embrace, its artfully arranged stones that recall the gentle flow of water and time, which passes and teaches. Time carves a place in us that calls to others and those relationships -- unexpected and new, some momentary, some lasting -- make us whole.