I should have served a pickle.
The thought came during one of my favorite parts of having guests — basking in the left-behind warmth while cleaning up after they’ve gone home. An old friend had come over one afternoon to deliver a late birthday present.
She’d invited me to her table a few weeks earlier for a meal of homemade pizza and homemade blood-orange cake. There were gifts then, too, mostly consumables, partly for the fun of having several things to unwrap and try to guess what they were — dried cranberries, yogurt raisins, Teddy Grahams. And a cold glass jar. Preserves of some sort? What else comes in a glass jar, has some heft, and apparently just came out of the fridge? I laughed when I realized it was kosher dills.
Months earlier, I had served my friend a tray of finger foods, including two dill pickle halves. As we talked and nibbled, she asked for more pickles. I had to disappoint her. No more pickles in the jar! I split the last one between us.
These pickles were part joke, part promise that she’d be over again and would save me from the embarrassment of picklelessness. Remembering and cultivating little jokes like this has always been part of our long friendship.
I’ve been thinking about the particularities of friendship because of a little book that’s been on my table for a while. It’s a small hardback, Friendship Poems from Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets series. It was a gift, too, but not to me.
To my best friend —
these are some of
my favorite poems!
Enjoy!
Love you,
Em
Who is Em? Who loved a friend and poetry enough to give her best friend a book of both? And who was the beloved recipient? What happened for the book to leave her (I’m guessing it’s her) possession, sometime between its 1995 publication and the fall day in 2016 when I bought it for $4 in a used bookstore? How did it get there?
Is the cover scratched, sticky, and creased from use or lack of care? It hardly seems read at all, but it’s possible to handle a well-made little hardback like this without breaking its spine.
The yellow ribbon lies between two poems, “My Old Friend Prepared a Chicken with Millet” by Men Hao-Jan (AD 689-740) and from an “Epistle Answering to One that Asked to Be Sealed of the Tribe of Ben” by Ben Jonson. There are two places where the book seems to fall open, just a few pages from each other: “Two Friends” by Norman MacCaig and “The Old Familiar Faces” by Charles Lamb.
So many questions. The book begins with the category “What Are Friends?”
Emily Dickinson gets the first word:
Nature assigns the Sun —
That — is Astronomy —
Nature cannot enact a Friend —
That — is Astrology.
What is friendship? What are friends?
Elizabeth Jennings says it’s a love impossible to analyze.
Tao Tschung Yu says it’s people who can quarrel with each other and then drop the argument and have a picnic.
Cole Porter says it’s coming to each other’s rescue when you’re in a jam or a mess or jail.
Ogden Nash says they’re people who’d dive deep and risk the bends to save you if you were being eaten by an octopus.
An Aztec poem says it’s like a fragrant flower, a heron feather, a bird song.
W.H. Auden says, “Come when you can: Your room will be ready.”
Emily Brontë says it’s more holly tree than wild rose, blooming in winter and evergreen the rest of the year.
Henry David Thoreau says it’s two sturdy oaks withstanding storms, wind, and tide side by side.
I think they all have a point.
On that afternoon when my friend — my first guest in the new year — brought me a belated birthday gift, our friendship was a house blessing. Friendship looked like her bringing me a cozy pair of mail-order mukluks, just because they looked like me. It was drinking tea together, asking one question and giving the space for a long answer. Instead of Men Hao-Jan’s chicken and millet, it was Irish soda bread and the last Cara Cara orange. And the bookend to post-visit tidying was pre-visit cleaning areas of my home that have been too long untouched, because although I knew she wouldn’t care, anticipating her visit awakened the care in me.
Next time she gets whole dills.
Photo by 白士 李, Creative Commons via Flickr. Post by Laura Lynn Brown, author of Everything That Makes You Mom.
- Pandemic Journal: An Entry on Pencil Balancing - August 4, 2020
- Between Friends: Wordplay and Other Playful Bonds - July 25, 2019
- The Power of Curiosity: “Can I Touch Your Hair?” by Irene Latham & Charles Waters - May 29, 2019
L.L. Barkat says
I love the poetic possibility of:
“a fragrant flower, a heron feather, a bird song”
and the down-to-earth promise of:
“Come when you can: Your room will be ready.”
Also, I am mulling what it means to give a book of friendship—not just literally but also figuratively. 🙂
Laura Brown says
Aren’t those great? And sometimes it’s both: that readied room, with a bouquet of flowers on the bedside table.
To give a book of friendship I think it takes a long time to do that figuratively. I’m going to mull that with you. And there’s probably a whole post, or chapter, to be written about book inscriptions between friends.
Maureen says
A Poet’s Friendship
There in the visit’s messy left-behind —
a single slice of pizza gone cold,
dried cranberries, halves of a split
dill, cake crumbs, my favorite Teddy
Grahams — I find the small library
book, a hardback, its cover reflecting
in the glass jars on the glass tray
on my table. It has heft, preserves
a promise we’d made one afternoon
to keep our friendship ever-green:
I to hold her room always at the ready,
she to rescue me from the embarrassment
of picklelessness. Remembering our joke
as I stand before the refrigerator door,
I have to laugh. Then I rummage for the jar
I’d put way in back, in which I thought
to save for her, my best reader, the jam
she so liked to spread on her chicken roast.
The jar was empty, its top still sticky from
little fingers that had treated themselves
to her birthday present. This will disappoint
her, I think. As I go about the cleaning up,
I question what to give instead — a flower
fragrant as tea blooming in our china cups,
that heron feather discovered at the shore
last summer, perhaps my new collection
wrapped with ribbons as red as winter’s
cardinals. No, I decide, picking up the book.
What I give in friendship is my love. Enough.
Dedicated to Laura Lynn
Megan Willome says
Maureen, you’ve outdone yourself! (And that’s saying something.)
Laura Brown says
Oh, beautiful, Maureen. Wow.
Maureen says
Thank you for the inspiration, Laura. I very much enjoyed the post. It reminds me of several friends I have and cherish.
I’d love to read that Aztec poem. Such a beautiful line to describe friendship.
Laura Brown says
Like a quetzal plume, a fragrant flower,
friendship sparkles:
like heron plumes, it weaves itself into finery.
Our song is a bird calling out like a jingle:
how beautiful you make it sound!
Here, among flowers that enclose us,
among flowery boughs you are singing.
It’s seven lines apparently taken from a longer poem, attributed to Nezahualcoyotl (aka Hungry Coyote), king of Texcoco in the 15th century.
Donna says
Oh this is so beautiful.
Sandra Heska King says
Oh, Maureen! You *have* outdone yourself!
Donna says
I was thinking, all through the reading of every sweet line, I’d nearly forgotten what that kind of friendship feels like.
Beautiful Laura. Such a blessing.
Laura Brown says
Thank you, Donna.
Mary Van Denend says
You got me with picklelessness, Laura! Try saying that 10 times in a row.
May you never lack for good dill pickles and ever love your good dear friends.
Mary
Laura Brown says
I made it to four times. 🙂
Thank you, Mary! I hope our paths cross again one of these years.
Sandra Heska King says
“because although I knew she wouldn’t care, anticipating her visit awakened the care in me”
I really like that. It gives such a positive tone to that frantic last-minute clean-up before someone comes.
Similar to Donna who’d almost forgotten what that kind of friendship felt like… I’m not sure I’ve *ever* had a friendship like that. If so, it’s been so long that I *have* forgotten. I’ll have to mull on what’s true and why.
And while L.L. is thinking about the sweetness of “a fragrant flower, a heron feather, a bird song,” I’m thinking of blood oranges (I’ve never had one, and the name makes me shudder), mukluks, and pickles.
I love how you’ve played with words in this piece, Laura. It’s got re-readability.
Laura Brown says
Thanks, Snady!
We’ve been friends for 33 1/2 years.
Sandra Heska King says
That’s a long time. That takes a lot of nurturing. 🙂
Maureen says
Sandra,
You should try a blood orange (the color comes from its antioxidents), though it’s only around at certain times of the year. Good in cocktails or as fruit juice – pretty much like any orange.
I’ve always liked the name (it’s so dramatic). ‘The Blood Oranges” is the title of a quite good John Hawkes book.
Sandra Heska King says
Drinking the juice of one might make me feel like a vampire. LOL. Couldn’t they just call it a red orange? 😉
Laura Brown says
And “Blood Oranges in the Snow” is the name of a great winter (partly but not wholly) album by Over The Rhine).
Bethany R. says
Such a wealth of beautiful thoughts and lines here. I’m with you, Sandra, is this lovely? “…because although I knew she wouldn’t care, anticipating her visit awakened the care in me.”
Laurie Klein says
Oh Laura, this wise and sumptuous post offers a cyber Babette’s Feast for me—except we lucky diners are savoring every nibble and sip. The quotes, the quirky particulars, the mouthwateringness . . . mmmMMM. Thank you 🙂
Marilyn says
“…. anticipating her visit awakened the care in me.
Next time she gets whole dills.”
Enjoyed this whole post…AND the comments!
L.L. Barkat says
I’ve been thinking more about that section that so many of us were drawn to: “awakened the care in me.” It’s got me wondering…
• what awakens the care, exactly?
• why does one type of event awaken care but not another?
• are there guests who would not awaken the care in us—and, why?
• why has our care been asleep? And, is this helpful or not, to have our care be asleep?
Thanks for getting me thinking. (I’ve also been thinking about the structure of this friendship, at the ritual level, but that’s a whole other set of thoughts!)
Laura Brown says
Good questions. Some answers are general, some specific to this situation.
1. I’ll answer with another question: Why do we take care for others in ways we haven’t been, or wouldn’t, for ourselves?
2. I think the presence of food makes a difference, especially if it has a ritual aspect, such as tea making.
3. Possibly people who don’t notice things, who don’t see or don’t mind what we perceive as mess. Sudden guests whose arrival doesn’t leave time for such care. Guests in distress, who need a different kind of care. Guests who have been indifferent or unkind in some way in the past — though the question then is whether they would get to be guests again.
4a. Hmm. Some possibilities: winter; stress; being away from home a lot, so home becomes like a hotel room, mostly a place to sleep; depression, despondency, acedia; depleting the care reservoir in caring for others. 4b. If care is a euphemism for “I have to make things perfect,” then yes, it can be helpful to loosen up. It may be helpful in the way that understanding cycles of death and rebirth are helpful. But I think it can be harmful too.