All tagged Friendship
Thirty-seven days into self-isolation Ellen Barone asked her husband Hank, “Are you lonely?” Like much of the world’s population, they are physical-distancing and staying home to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19. Would this, she worried, lead to loneliness? And, in turn, to biological effects as deadly as the virus itself? Instead, isolation has brought clarity to something they’d innately suspected all along.
On a fateful day in 2003 when Canadian expat Chris Pady and his wife Michele befriended a young stray dog on the streets of Tainan, Taiwan, they never imagined the many ways their new best friend 'Flea' would change their lives forever.
Bobbi Lerman's solitary morning in a St Andrews tea shop is unexpectedly transformed by the spontaneous invite of four open-hearted Scottish women.
When Jules Older received a Farewell Party invitation from a friend in Santa Cruz, California, he made the trip not only to say goodbye to an extraordinary man but also to discover the hometown that his friend so dearly loves.
Ellen Barone had almost written off social media when a Facebook private message from a long lost Scottish friend flashed across her iPhone display in Medellin, Colombia. Seconds later the two were live chatting across continents, sparking powerful memories infused with laughter and music and a shared New Mexico road trip.
by Jules Older
On our last visit to Japan:
* * *
It was to Tokyo we were returning, decades later. Our friends – Eipan and Hirame, Eiichi and Hiroko – still lived there, and it was way past time to re-une. And we wanted to see the city we’d been so taken with all those years before. How had it changed? How had it not?
When I tell Hirame on the phone that I’m looking for changes, she says, “Expect to see a lot of blonde Japanese.”
I chuckle. “Not your daughters, I bet.” Despite his years as a grad student (and my roommate) in New York, Eipan is very traditional, a samurai businessman with a 6th degree black belt in Judo. I can hear Hirame’s quiet smile all the way from Tokyo. “They’re brown-hair Japanese.”
It doesn’t take long to spot other changes, other sames. First stop on the bus trip in from the airport is the La Floret Hotel. As the bus doors open, a young woman in a sharply pressed uniform bows deeply. Score one for the same. On the other hand, where the massive hotel – and dozens like it – now stand, there used to be only small shops. The Tokyo skyline has pushed skyward.
At our friends’ home, there’s a similar mixture. We still take off our shoes at the door, but Hirame greets us with a kiss, not a bow. The ofuru, the ubiquitous Japanese hot tub, still awaits, only now it’s kitted out with bubbles, programmable water jets and digital temperature controls that can be operated from the kitchen.
"You have to come down if you want your stuff," Beatrice said. "There's termites under the building and I have to fumigate."
I can't remember what I stored with Beatrice while exiting Los Angeles for rural Kansas , but lately I've been missing certain photos, journals and scripts. In ‘04, I fled after 20 years of trying to make a career and happy love life. My friends begged me not to go:
"You're the last person in the world who should move to Kansas !" said my charming boss.
"One thing I'm hearing about where you're going...No available men," said my handsome therapist.
"You won't be able to find a job. People will see you as an outsider. Like when I moved to Florida ," said a well-meaning friend.
