A toast to friendship

21 Jun 2024

When my little sister started kindergarten, my mum and a group of other ‘mums*’ got together for a coffee.   Or a cup of tea. Whatever old people** did back in the mid 80s for fun.  Over weeks, months and then years, they continued to meet for drinks/lunch/dinner/whatevs, inviting other friends along the way.  Some came regularly, some rarely, but by the time my mum died in early 2022, that particular group of friends (known colloquially as ‘The Kaleen Mums’) had been going strong for almost forty years.

****

Since we took our first steps into parenthood, we have relied heavily on our friendship circle for support.  Neither of us live physically close to family members so the daily minutiae of real life has been bolstered by friends from the very beginning.  For almost 14 years now, it has been friends that we have depended on as last minute babysitters, picked up groceries, or who soothed toddlers with skinned knees and black eyes who swore black and blue ‘I can do it’ before gravity proved them wrong, while you cried noisy tears of relief into the shoulders of another.

It is friends that have swooped in to pick up sick children when we’re away with work and can’t get back straight away. Friends who have dropped over sleeping bags for school camps, visited us to deliver books and treats for ailing children.  It is friends that have left cocktails and biscuits on our doorstep during pandemic lockdowns and it is friends that have taken photos of our children when they unexpectedly get an award at assembly and they listen endlessly to the myriad of monologues on each of the passions that your children embrace as they hurtle towards adulthood at a speed which is terrifying.  It is friends that hand out hugs and gentle words/profanity when life goes to shit and who bring the wine and cheese to the front door when it’s time to celebrate.

Friendships have been front and centre over the last couple of years as my children have navigated their way from primary school into high school.  I have seen their friendship circles widening and diversifying. My chest has ached as they left behind friendships which were so crucial to their younger selves as they headed off into different schools and different interests.  I have delighted in the new with them, the giddy excitement of finding people that get you (like really get you), the tumultuous to-ing and fro-ing of old friendships stretching to accommodate their new, longer legged, edgier and more vulnerable selves.

The thing is, friendship is always front and centre.  For tweens, teens and adults of all ages.

Khalil Gibran writes in one poem:

 Let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance

between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond

of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between

the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from

one cup.

It’s a poem about marriage.

And love.

But I think in the spaces and movements and filled cups and talk of love, it speaks very much of friendships.

Friendships are so very rarely because we are ‘the same’.  They are about shared experiences, memories and values.  They are about love, and support.  Friendships are full of grace.  So very full of grace.  Friends are people who believe in you, who are kind to you, who laugh with you. And at you.  They are hold you accountable, without judgement.  They also judge you very much about who you choose as your hall pass, what reality TV you watch and your reverse parking skills.

I would also like to drop in here that some of my friends are also very, very wrong about the Barbie movie.

Friendship is never about perfection.   We are generally kinder to our friends than we are to ourselves.  Friends know so very, very, very much about us and kind of nothing at all.  And they love us because of what they know. In spite of what they know. And with a keen interest in getting the rest of it out of you at some point.

Tonight, I will join one group of my friends, and I will be surrounded by strong, supportive, and very tired women.  We will drink wine and chat about the week that was, talk about our children, (potentially***) grumble about our partners, laugh at inappropriate tik-toks, wonder how our friend is going on her trip to her homeland and generally put the world to rights.

And yes, we will be very aware of the privilege we have to be able to do those things safely in a world where so many are unsafe.

We will return to our home with full hearts, a lighter step and what feels like less worries, pour ourselves into PJs and slump onto the couch with our families watching TV and vowing that next week we will definitely be (and do) all the things we just told our friends over that third glass of wine.

We won’t.  But they won’t care.

So, on what would have been my mum’s 78^th birthday, when I am surrounded by my merry bunch of ‘just mums’, I will be raising a glass to the OGs – The Kaleen Mums – the group of friends that loved my Mum through decades of adulting, children, marriage, highs, lows, and all the rest.

You were the glorious, generous, beautiful circle of love that let her be all the versions of herself she needed to be.

To all of mum’s friends.  (And to all of mine.  Who let ME be all the versions of myself I need to be)

Slainte! Salud! L’Chaim! Prost! Cin Cin! Cheers!

Yes yes….
* I know they were more than ‘mums’ but I was a child and like all children I generally only knew who people were in relation to other children. This is why I knew people like “Kate’s Mum” and “Cate with a C’s mum” who would probably have been friends with “Katie’s Mum who has blonde hair not Katie’s Mum that drives the red car”
** When you are ten everybody is an old person.
*** Undoubtedly.  Sorry husband of mine but even perfect partners can be annoying.

The power of stories

10 Jan 2022

I spend a lot of time thinking about stories.  A lot.  Some of that is because I’m a voracious reader.  Some of that is because I am a content creator and so I tell a lot of stories.  Some mine, some for clients, some to justify why the tooth fairy was such a stingy bastard this time round.

But mostly because stories are literally at the heart of everything. And that fascinates me.

Stories are defined by the dictionary as accounts of imaginary or real people, accounts of events, reports, plots, a particular person’s representation of the facts of a matter, information, rumours, news and more.

Countries are basically stories – they are literally imaginary lines in many cases. Imaginary lines where maybe one side speaks one language and the other a different one.  Within a single country, different stories define culture, customs and dialect.

Currency is simply a story about how different people value metal and paper. Without the story there is no difference between a $50 note and wrapping paper.  The story is what deems the wrapping paper to have a decorative use and the $50 a value.

Religion is made up of hundreds of different stories which overlap almost imperceptibly to some. In fact, very loosely, religions can be summarised by who you think the main character is and how important his/her story is to you.

Families are stories and often they are stories without happy endings despite our Hallmark tendency to eulogise the unit as the most important of all.

In the song Trial Before Pilate (from the Jesus Christ Superstar musical), Pilate sings to Jesus – “We all have truths, are yours the same as mine?” and I have always loved that challenge in stories, because all truths are different.  As human beings we bring our own stories to every shared moment, thus imbuing it with a truth that is unique to us.  Our own story, our own truth, is ours and ours alone.  There is not a single other person on the planet that has the same perception of you, the same perception of the same events.  Every single person you meet has a version of you that is entirely their own.

So if you meet one million people in your life time – there are one million true versions of you out there.  You feature in one million stories.  Sometimes you’re a lead character, and other times you are so insignificant you don’t rate a mention.  Sometimes you’re in the story for a while, and other times, but a moment – but perhaps a moment of import, a moment that lingers, and shapes another story.

When we talk about brands having a story and the room rolls their eyes at what they deem your marketing wankspeak, they are contributing to the brand story.  Their perceptions of a brand matter to its success. The people the brand hires become characters in the brand’s story. As businesses, we think long and hard about the people we employ because they are so critical to the story arc.

But we rarely employ the same stringent critique to our personal relationships, to the characters in our own story.  It typically takes an incident, a tragedy if you will allow me to be so dramatic, before we assess how critical, how impactful they are, on our own story and the arc of the main character.

I’m fascinated by people that claim to know their partner or children better than they know themselves.  It’s not possible.  That is a story they tell to keep power in their own narrative irrespective of its truth.  You can’t know anybody better than they know themselves, but you can tell your story more loudly, more repetitively, so that your story is the most heard.  That ultimately is what history is – the retention of the stories told most loudly, by those who believe their version of events to be the most important.

Each and every one of us is a character that is fleshed out bit by bit, chapter by chapter, moulded by other characters, events and experiences.  All of us impactful in small ways and big ways and good ways and bad ways.  We are, at all times, both the storyteller and the story itself.

Stories are spoken. Stories are sung. Stories are written. Stories are painted. Turned into poems and movies and gardens and news reports and gossip and innuendo and inspiration and policy and the list goes on.  And on.

Stories endure.  That is their power.

Make yours one that you are proud to tell.