Friendships

I’ve been pondering what makes friendships. By living here I’ve been given a great variety of friends that I would never have known had I married the Kansas farmer. Instead, I married my best friend and said, “Whether thou goest I will go.”

Gisela Gracia became my first best friend here in the city. Our personalities were so much alike that even now writing about her, I stop and remember and miss her, but she went Home many years ago when we were both still young.

I spent today with Shelly from Brooklyn. She introduced delicious Trinidadian food that we ate in her little apartment by Prospect Park before walking through the Brooklyn zoo. Shelly gets me, like my childhood friends never can, in that she understands city living.

The mission sees a constant turnover of staff, but the Akinyombo family remains. We have a background: revivals, communions, Mama’s passing, sickness, school programs, Bible School. These and more bring “ties that bind.”

Can brothers and sisters with Amish backgrounds share the deepest things of life with the Holdeman Mennonite raised in Kansas? Brother Louie Wengerd offered that we could buy a cottage at Homestead Heights. I believe we’d feel right at home with these Pennsylvania people – our family here in the East. (No plans!)

I have a little sister in Virginia. Anyone who knows both of us thinks that we don’t look anything alike, but her and I went through a heap of trouble that drove us together. (Love you Kari.)

The one who calls Laurence, “Papa,” doesn’t share his skin color. Helen Berniece will always be a part of us as will her parents and grandparents.

I cannot forget my childhood friends. They were there then. They’re here for me now.

We care about the young men who lived with us in the Woodside apartment. They are friends. We’re proud of them.

This list is a long way from finished, but I’m going to quit. It’s been a good exercise to realize how blessed I am as we sit alone – so often alone – in our apartment.

What makes a friendship? How can we have more friends?

Berniece