The treasure of friendship

This lovely orchid on my desk greets me every morning.

I’ve always known my friends are important and valued, but I’ve had two strong and different lessons in the healing art of friendship recently.

For years it’s been my custom to go to dinner with Betty on Wednesday nights, a ritual we both enjoy. Recently as circumstances dictated, we added Jean to our plans. This week we were to go on Tuesday, since I had Wednesday-night plans. But I begged off. I just couldn’t think about what I wanted to eat, wasn’t sure of the idea of a restaurant. Lately I’ve become a bit afraid to venture out for fear of an instant need for bed or bath.

So those two ladies brought their cheerful selves and supper to me. When Betty asked what I wanted I replied “Soup,” so she said Panera. I looked at their Tuesday soup selections and chose corn chowder, broccoli cheese, or tomato basil and asked to be surprised. So Betty and I had corn chowder—it was delicious, though I only ate about half.

We talked about a lot of things, and we laughed a lot, but we did not spend a lot of time talking about how I feel. Because I spend a lot of time idly at the computer, I told them bits of trivia they hadn’t heard. We talked about my latest possible/probable project—shh! Can’t tell yet—and I described the dog kerfuffle of the other day. It was light girl talk, but it made me realize a few things: I’m tired of eating alone, I get lonely in my cottage all day every day, and my imagination runs wild when I spend too much time alone.

Today was a totally different experience, and one I worried about. Friends from Houston were coming to take me to lunch—since I seem to wear out as the day goes on, we switched supper to lunch, These are people I’ve known professionally through Texas Institute of Letters and other connections and, more recently, on Facebook. Babette Hale and I share several interests—we both write fiction, though her is more refined than my mysteries, we are both interested in food, and we love dogs. I think that’s where we forged an online friendship—over my Sophie, and her lab, Rosie.

Leon Hale is a longtime (over sixty years) columnist for first the now-defunct Houston Post and then the Houston Chronicle. Now ninety-seven, he’s been retired for four long years—shoot, he lasted longer than I did. Leon’s columns were personal—whatever struck his fancy, interesting people he met, food, animals, you name it. He mostly wrote six columns a week, and he has a wide and loyal following. He has several collections in print, a cookbook memoir, and at least one novel, Bonney’s Place.

To tell the truth, he is a revered grandfather of Texas letters and together they are a high-powered literary couple. I was a bit in awe, especially of Leon, but we had a delightful lunch and the conversation flowed freely. When he looked at me and said, “They tell me you cook on a hot plate. Must be a big one,” I knew we were off to a good start.

We were gone to lunch for two hours, and I never once thought about bed or bath, never felt sick. Didn’t eat much but liked what I did. When they brought me home, I told them I’d felt better today than I had in a couple of months. The healing power of friendship, good conversation, and a little bit of food.

A lot of lessons learned these last two days. Now to digest them—I use the word advisedly