I'm seeing my friend Jeane for lunch. The first time she and I met, she nodded, extending her hand but holding on to a smile. Immediately (and needlessly) I assumed she disliked me. There may be no greater penalty to a woman's ego than this assumption. Try to accept it, I told myself. But that's not what I did.
Instead, I invited her to lunch. I wanted to know her. And I wanted her to know me: a woman who knows how hard it can be to shake off personal or, worse, professional mistakes made years ago even if you are now safely snuggled into middle age. Or a condominium in Ballard. Let's face it: people love to talk. It's a jungle of rumor out there.
Our first breakfast we went to the Queen Anne Café, and while waiting in line in front of the windows-for-walls she asked me: "What drives you creatively?" Could she still dislike me after a question like that? No. Communication happens when someone builds a bridge for the other to cross. Looking back, it's as if the glassed-in foyer were symbolic of how we were to carry on our future conversations: seeing right into ourselves.
Now, years later, I can mark our friendship by where we met for breakfast, lunch, dinner or (even better!) happy hour: two words strung together into a euphemism for sharing the day's pitfalls rather than happiness, in two hours rather than one. Because - and even though in modern-day Seattle yoga claims possession of most things spiritual - to me, a dry red wine makes for something to believe in.
Our second meeting was her idea. "Let's have dinner," she said. "That is, if you have an open night in your week." I didn't want to tell her that I'm all open nights to an invitation for dinner. To a work-at-home writer, they don't come often enough.
We usually search out a small, amiable café - two, maybe three tables - because, um, sometimes we are sort of rambunctious for a restaurant that promotes fine dining. Not drunkety-drunk, but giddy. More than once we've laughed so uncontrollably, only to look up and see the people at the nearest table staring at us, the thought bubble over there heads saying: Ladies, get a hold of yourselves! Though one time a woman got up from her table, walked over to ours and said, "I want to sit with the two of you!"
"I love that you don't shoosh me," I tell Jeane. "Shoosed isn't me. Shoosed is khaki pants, flat soles and a string of pearls. Me, I don't want to censor and simmer. I want to lose control, ahh, in a good way." All of this sort of slips out like a sneezing jag, but having a real friend demands exactly this: breathtaking honesty.
Yesterday we met for a glass of vino at La Buona Tavola, or The Good Table, which it most definitely is. The café fronts the Pike Place Market, and within its walls I'm transported into a world of vineyards, red earth and huge family dinners on Sunday. There was another business here not long ago. Though who can remember what it was? Anyone? "Not me," Jeane says. "And who cares, as long as the wine is this good!" And then we get on with it: carve a sluice through our fears, turn our negatives into positives, and I always leave thinking, yes, this is a friendship all its own.
"So," Jeane asks soon as we're seated, "did you call your friend?" She is helping me get over a friendship that sort of fizzled before it began, one bump in the road and it fell off track, and we're trying to narrow down the reasons together.
"No," I replied. "I haven't called. She hasn't called. I doubt either of us will start now."
"We can't make people like us," she says. "End of story." She's right. We can't. And though I accept how people change and go their own ways, her words relieve me. Good conversation is everything. After one, I'm a better person, wiser, which comes only from being truthful or "real," as Jeane puts it. Her next words were more of a challenge for a writer to work her way through: "What does it feel like, that is, if the friendship is working well?"
Here is my answer: It's as if everything I need to know is right here. Nothing to prove, just stunning acceptance.
Jeane leaned back, looking satisfied. "That's my girl," she said.
About people, here's what I no longer question: if someone makes me laugh, especially at myself, I want to be near that person. Even if I don't always understand why one person can draw humor from the depths of me and another only dread. And given that I was raised by devout parents who escaped a world war with only their lives, who still live as if the next disaster hulks right around the bend, it's ironic how unscathed they left my sense of humor. Which just goes to show the womb is not a mold. "Yes siree, by the time I was 13, like an old house, I was ripe for renovation," I tell Jeane.
"Me too," says Jeane. "By the way, today was one of those days...." And we launch into what can be for her, a really bad day. Because life always comes down to the simplest of things: the crisis, the cure.
And trust. Trust is the catalyst here.
Sanelli's latest book is "Falling Awake" (available at Queen Anne Books). This piece is from a forthcoming collection of essays about living in Seattle.
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