Finding a Friend

I have always found making a new friend harder than I think it should be. It’s not that I haven’t had friends. I’ve had four or five whom I would think of as best friends at the time I knew them. Four of them have died since then.

I have a few more recent friends, too, who share an interest or several with me, but most blend into the category of friendly acquaintanceship. And that’s much easier.

Of course there are the online friends, as well, via social media. Because I live in a rural area, the online friendships become extremely important.

I loved the early days when so many people I knew in real life were still on Facebook. I felt I could know them better through their posts and comments than was ever possible through the shallow social encounters we grew up with.

Now, instead of friends, the algorithm chooses advertising for products one has already purchased or would never want. And the friends who remain drown in the internet “slop” that results.

But I’ve recently discovered a new source for the friendships we must have. I’ve found them among the authors of books I’ve enjoyed.

The person who writes the pages I read feels as real and known to me, sometimes, as a person I know from daily life. And occasionally that impression is correct. It was in the case of my husband.

Since early childhood I have been an easy reader. I’m far more adept at decoding meanings written in print than I have ever been in face to face conversation.

In conversation so many of the nuances are projected by micro- twitches of muscles around the eyes and mouth, by body language, by the timing of pauses and movements of the eyes.

I find words on a page far easier to understand. I don’t feel the friendship connection, however, with every author whose work I read. I don’t feel it, usually, in fiction. Too much invention lies between. Creative nonfiction is more fertile soil.

So who are they, these writers I feel are friends? One of them is Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations and The Comfort of Crows. From Nashville she writes about her life for the New York Times, scrutinizing her backyard and finding “multitudes” therein. It’s a process that resonates deeply with my own inclinations and she is a master.

She and I shared the experience of open screened windows while growing up. It underscores our mutual certainty of a personal connection with nature that is often lacking in today’s airconditioned world.

But she is also legally blind in one eye. She has written about the challenges of her sight limitations and their effect on the intensity with which she notices the living world of nature around her.

My own vision issues over the years make those aspects of her observation resonate, as well.

Sometimes, though, fiction can solidify the impression of familiarity.

Last night I completed an early short story by Amy Tan. Lately I’ve known her writing as a fellow bird enthusiast. In The Backyard Bird Chronicles, she writes very personally about her extensive involvement in feeding, drawing and considering her feathered visitors.

As I finished her very personal short story, it occurred to me that she felt not only like a friend, but an old friend—because I’ve known her writing for several decades. The combination of time’s passage, similar age, and the personal subject matter of her writing produced this feeling.

I was surprised by how satisfying and true the friendship felt.

Readers can contact Hale at bfhale2017@gmail.com Her new book, This Familiar Heart, is available at the Fayette County Record office and bookstores, on and offline, everywhere.