Jill's Journal: The story of friendship

Friendship is one of those subjects that seems simple until you stop and think about how many different shapes it can take. Some friendships are measured in decades. Others arrive unexpectedly and become important before you even realize it. And some are just plain unusual – friendships between people who, on paper, might never have crossed paths.

Last week, I had the good fortune to witness the start of what I believe will become a longtime friendship between Harris Larson and Kevin Bertness, and this one falls under the “just plain unusual” kind. I mean, it all started with Kevin, in a crunch for time, deciding to part ways with three boxes of his longtime music career. Then enters Harris, someone you’d never imagined was an accomplished piano player himself, who spent portions of his day on the garbage route in Valley Springs. And when he spotted a stack of classical piano music books all those years ago, I’m sure he never imagined he’d get a new friend, too.

That’s the magic of friendship.

After writing this story, I got to thinking about my own friendships. I’ve written about one friend that I met 60 years on the borders of our backyards. Longtime friendships, like this one, are true treasures. Some friends know your history, but the best ones know your history and still like you. They remember the awkward years, the bad haircuts, the questionable decisions and the versions of you that no longer exist.

A longtime friend doesn’t require a lot of explaining. You can pick up a conversation after six months, six weeks or six minutes and somehow, it seems you’re right back where you left off.

There is something comforting about having someone who remembers the same things you remember. The places, people, inside jokes and stories that would mean nothing to anyone else suddenly become priceless.

Some friendships survive because of shared memories. Others survive because you keep making new ones. The latter may be even more important. At a certain age, you realize that having someone who has known you for 40, 50 or 60 years is a pretty remarkable thing. That’’ a lot of life to have witnessed together.

But new friendships are equally important. We tend to think friendship is something that happens in childhood or young adulthood, but that’s nonsense. We’re never too old to make a new friend.

New friendships can be wonderfully uncomplicated. You meet someone because of a shared interest, a job, a volunteer project, a neighborly encounter or simply because you happened to be standing in the same place at the same time.

Sometimes a new friend comes along and you think, Where have you been all my life? And then you realize the answer is: somewhere else, waiting for the right coincidence. There’s something brave about allowing yourself to be known by someone new. Longtime friendships have history. New friendships have possibility.

And then there’s those out-of-the-ordinary friendships that simply don’t make sense on paper.

Different ages. Different backgrounds. Different interests. Different generations. People who probably wouldn’t have chosen one another if someone had handed them a list and said, “Pick your friends.”

Friendship, I’ve found, doesn’t care much about demographics. It cares about connection.

Maybe it’s two people who met because one was throwing something away and the other saw value in it. Maybe it’s a newspaper editor and somebody she would never have otherwise encountered. Maybe it’s two people brought together by music, photography, baseball, volunteering or some completely random circumstance.

Sometimes the thing that makes a friendship unusual is exactly what makes it memorable.

And maybe that’s the beauty of friendship: We don’t always get to choose when it begins, how long it lasts or what form it takes. We just get to be grateful for when it happens.