Rock solid
When I was a young father, I learned a lot about choices that are inherent to being human. I learned this by doing laundry.
Trial and error taught me the necessity of unloading my oldest son’s pockets before sticking the pants in a washing machine. If I didn’t do that, chances are I’d hear the clickity-clack of pocket change, see the smear of ink stains, or retrieve some other foreign object from the basin. On several occasions, I’d find a rock.
Why do boys do this, I’ve wondered. Kids tend to pick up interesting items and hold on to them. Pieces of glass. A bottle cap. An oddly shaped stick.
Back then, I studied the rocks I found, trying to figure out what caught my son’s eye, what shape or color or heft made him bend, inspect, and put in his pocket for safe keeping. At first, I’d study, then chunk them into the backyard wondering if I’d find them in a future pocket. Then, I started labeling them. “Jacob’s rock. 5/21/1999” and so forth.
I had a collection for a while.
My son gathered rocks for years. I began to think of them as an extension of his personality, of who he was as a little boy: Each rock somehow mirrored what he was at that moment in life. Round and smooth, rough and shiny, they all appeared in his pocket.
It’s not a big leap to apply that logic to just about everything we choose, but it seems most relevant to our choices about the people with whom we spend a lot of time.
The folks we surround ourselves with mirror what’s happening inside of us. Different types fit different needs. Friendship echo chambers have their place—it’s often good to relax into the comfort of a non-challenging relationship, one that’s as comfortable as a warm cup on a cold day.
Adversarial friendships are fun to be part of as well. They offer challenge of thought and often devolve into the need for a break from each other. Distant friendships are like Amazon trucks; they bring just what you need and arrive at just the right time. Like those rocks, relationships can be smooth or rough, edgy or shiny. How we collect friends, how we place them where they should be and remove them when needed is a study in psychology.
We traveled to Sewanee a couple of weeks ago to visit child No. 4 and allow child No. 5 to have a real-life college visit. Child No. 6 tagged along and enjoyed every minute because when you’re 9, every car ride is an adventure, and every foreign room is a castle. We were also meeting a couple whose son had been suite mates with ours during their freshman year. The couple had become our close friends.
They are about our age—the wife quick-witted and outgoing like my spouse, the husband introverted and easily amused like me. They drove in from Atlanta and visited their college kid as we visited ours.
The friendship we have with them is of the kitchen variety—the type where the conversation seems to be most poignant when we gravitate to that room. We sit or stand around a table and share drinks, rolling belly laughs, and conversations deeper than they should be as food is prepared or cleaned up. Centering the relationship on the focal point of the kitchen touches a lot of corners. The distraction of food preparation entices folks to reveal their characters as recipes undulate between easy and complicated. Food provides the notes on a page; conversation is the music that pours forth.
It rained several inches that weekend. Other than the usual moment of respect at Richard Allin’s grave in the Sewanee cemetery, we stayed close to the cabin, the kitchen bar an anchor. We visited each other’s histories, touched on fears, and doted on children. When the weekend ended, we left for Little Rock and they turned in the opposite direction to Atlanta.
It’s one of those friendships that will pass through the airwaves of text messages and phone calls until the kitchen summons us once again. It’s simple and it’s good.
Friendships often run their course and simply find themselves gathering dust on shelves. Some become poisonous and have to be thrown out. Those that marinate in the goodness of kitchen-talk keep their flavor without effort.
Back home in the laundry room, I remember balancing one of my son’s rocks in my palm, feeling the weight of it above the washing machine and wondering for the thousandth time why he chose this rock out of all the rocks he could have picked up.
Nondescript, seemingly ordinary, nothing more to it than shape and heft—it puzzled me. I noted the date, I’m sure.
But that’s what he wanted then. Maybe he planned to drop it in a creek or destroy a wasp nest or use it as a tool to dig. Maybe he planned to build on it.
That’s the same type of incantation we use when we choose friendships. What we discard is obviously connected to what we pick up—a tiny mirror into our souls.
Cast away, embrace, let sit. All the while knowing it’s the reflection of who we are, what we need at that time.
And, if we find something solid, cling as if it’s Gibraltar.