The Sailor and I

Charley Freiberg photo

The Sailor and I have been friends for many decades; I met him originally when he was dating a college housemate. Back then he wasn’t a sailor, but the interest and desire already ran deep.  Like myself, he comes from a land-locked town somewhere in New England, but I remember the look of longing in his eyes when he visited the Husband and me, back in the dark ages when we lived on the coast of Maine, and he first caught sight of the Windjammers anchored off-shore. A few years later, the Sailor signed up for college classes in ocean studies, with the wild hope that assignments would involve long walks on the beach searching for washed-up treasure, gathering around a beach firepit to cook supper and sing sea chantys, and dressing like a pirate to practice saying “Arrrhg, matey.”

He was soon disabused of that fantasy and had to admit that just maybe he’d been reading too many works of sea-based fiction. But he did eventually learn to sail, and spends summers crewing on racing boats. He has stories to tell about nearly dying in weather on the deep ocean between Cuba and Florida, and that’s just about close enough for me. I’ll get on a ferry to the Isles of Shoals every so many years, but I don’t particularly enjoy the interminably boring 10 miles out and back. I wouldn’t like it more if it were exciting.

Star Island, Isles of Shoals; Charley Freiberg photo

We have things in common, however, as all long-time friends do, and many of the things that interest us don’t interest our mates. Amongst the things the Sailor and I do together are: haunt bookstores, the more and the more frequently the better; and peer into other people’s homes - specifically, homes of dead writers and others that are now historical sites; and go to museums, where lots of dead people’s stuff is stashed. We also both live with musicians, and musicians notoriously don’t often enjoy listening to other musician’s music, and they have their own performances that need to be attended. The Sailor and I perform the audience role for them and for musician-friends that our musicians won’t listen to. And finally – we like Chinese food, which neither of our mates enjoys at all.

Happily, each time we head out together, if we plan it right we can spend several hours in bookstores, eat supper at a Chinese restaurant, then go to a concert. Or on our way to or from a museum or a dead writer’s house, we can also slip into a local bookstore and catch supper at a Chinese restaurant on the way home. The combinations, like those at a dimsum restaurant, are endless.

We each have a pile of books next to our beds waiting to be consumed,  but we’re more likely to actually buy books at the Five Colleges sale in the spring, where a cloth bag brought to Lebanon can be filled  to overflowing for 30 bucks. Bookstores are – well, a good bookstore is like a sacred place: it will be quiet, but energized, and the mind relaxes and becomes soothed. Visiting a good bookstore, for people like us, is like visiting a spa for other folks: deeply relaxing, and sometimes we go home with a treasure.

Peering into other people’s homes is similar. We’re both readers and writers, and have read many of the same things, so seeing how some of the authors we’ve admired lived adds richness to the context of what we read. For those of us who enjoy such things, it’s fascinating. For someone who isn’t interested – it would be like going to a hardware store with the Husband is for me: time drags, my feet hurt, I want to sit down, I don’t like how it smells, I’m hot, nothing is interesting, and – can we go home now? Please?

Old friends are treasures, especially those you‘ve known since you were a barely-formed adult person, who can remember, and recount, all the people you’ve been from then to now. There are things the Sailor knows about me that the Husband never could – not only did he know me for years before I met the Husband, but we share different stuff. When I look back over the decades at friendships that have lasted so long, that have lasted sometimes through years when only letters at long distances maintained the connection, or a rare, once- or twice- a-year visit could be managed; friends who fell out of touch because of distance and personal circumstances, but who were the only ones to call in times of crisis; friends who can guess what I’m thinking and feeling about things before we ever talk about it – I realize I’m looking at a precious family who have chosen each other, and who will grow ever more precious as we grow even older.

I know a man who sets all things aside every Saturday morning until he has talked  with his dear friend who lives in California; I know a woman who schedules a long weekend every summer as inviolate - she and woman friends from college gather from all the corners of the world, to catch up and renew their bonds - she says that not one of them, over all the decades, has missed this reunion. I remember the surprise and wonder in my mother’s mother - my Meme’s - voice when she suddenly realized that all the “old people” at her retirement home were actually cherished friends from her childhood whom she hadn’t seen in a very long time. I remember hearing, or perhaps reading, a story about an old man who was dying: his wife called her husband’s dear old friend the day before he died, and held the phone to his ear so he could tell his friend for the last time that he loved her, “in the same old way.”

May we all have such riches, for all our days.

Charley Freiberg photo

Originally published in the Concord Monitor, May 4, 2017, as "Sea of Friends."