It is tempting to hang a "Do-not-disturb until 2024" sign on the door, but I doubt the bedside Christmas chocolate supply would sustain me that long.
This year has been miserable at home and abroad. Imagining next year will be better seems magical thinking. The general election campaign here will only exacerbate everything I have come to know and hate about this year, with political parties offering knee-jerk, dog-whistle, short-term "solutions" to all manner of problems while neatly avoiding doing anything meaningful or urgent about big issues, including climate change.
I am not sure what sort of New Year resolution will enable me to cope without much effing and blinding and weeping and wailing. (The gnashing of teeth possibility destroyed by the afore-mentioned chocolates.)
It will be a year when fostering friendship may be the only way to survive. That will involve both those friends you can rant to about the state of the world and those who run screaming from the room over any hint of a political discussion.
Friendship has been on my mind lately, partly because I have cranked up my old Ray Charles & Friends Super Hits CD and been playing it to death. Its 10 duets include one with Ricky Skaggs, adapting the old Cole Porter song Friendship from the musical Anything Goes. It’s much better than Ethel Merman, Judy Garland or even Kermit the Frog’s attempts. I love the silliness of such lines as "if you ever lose your teeth when you’re out to dine, you can borrow mine" and the way rhyme is stretched to breaking point as in "when other friendships have been forgate, ours will still be great".
It’s an odd thing, friendship. Like all the big relationships in life including spouse, partner, parent, grandparent, sibling, daughter or son, there’s no formal training. If it featured in the traditional school report, how many of us might get a "could do better" comment? There are no NCEA credits saying you have achieved the basics, or performed with merit or excellence, or clocked up a dismal not achieved. Nor is there a polytech course or university degree to extend any early learning or show you are performing with distinction. In NCEA parlance, we are all in the standard not assessed (SNA) category.
We muddle along, wondering if we are getting it right, hoping we are not stuffing it up too much and, with a bit of luck, learning a thing or two from others, whether it is what to do or what not to do.
With our closest friendships, it is not necessary for us to agree on everything all the time. We can forgive foibles and even regard them with affection, exhibiting a tolerance we may not reserve for our relatives. Some of my family members might be more inclined to reserve a place at the nearest rest-home when my enthusiasm exceeds my ability and combined with stupidity, results in an unnecessary drama. Such was my recent foray into tap washer changing. Result: a small flood, no washers changed, two taps rendered inactive, purchase of tools which proved useless, and two days without functioning indoor plumbing because I was not prepared to interrupt my long-suffering plumber’s weekend over my folly. On the plus side, I did make him laugh.
We can vent to friends about our relatives when they drive us mad without it causing more family friction. With close friendships, perhaps we are more careful than we might be with family members because if we get it terribly wrong, without the tie of kinship, there may be no reason to persevere.
Deaths in recent years of two close friends and others I regarded as more than acquaintances have made me aware such events are piling up as I age. People whose views were often insightful, or supportive, who made me laugh, who laughed with me, and sometimes at me, but not in a cruel way. Some of them people who, even though I might not have heard from them for ages, might suddenly pop into my life again to give succour when I needed it, but didn’t know I did. While they were alive, I did not always fully appreciate the colour and structure they provided to the patchwork of my life, and how much I would miss that. As Joni Mitchell says "Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?"
I’ll try to remember that, and that auld acquaintance should not be forgot, as we head for the new year and brace ourselves for its triumphs and tragedies.
- Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
