Friendships that Surprise

Here it is the 20th and my last post was on the 1st. Suffice it to say that life has been crazy this month, and now I'm trying to be happy in the place I'm at right now, instead of feeling understimulated.

A wonderful contributor to my sanity the past couple of days has been the ever-wonderful Cindy -- and her boyfriend, Mahon.

Becoming friends with Mahon has really been an interesting process. At first, he was just this guy in Cindy's geology class that she thought was cool and mentioned a few times. And then, the next semester, he started showing up at the apartment. All. The. Time.

It wasn't that I ever disliked Mahon. In fact, I was intrigued by my level of ambivalence. I just had no real interest in getting to know him. I believed Cindy when she said he was interesting and genuinely kind and spiritual to boot, but I still was more inclined to leave the room when he came over than not. While I fully support people as an institution, they do wear me out. Mahon, as a new person, was no exception to that.

However, because he was completely crazy about Cindy, he kept coming over. And mostly just because I didn't want to spend less time with my best friend on account of a BOY, I stuck around. This resulted in a few interesting silences when Cindy left the room...we both kind of pretended to be preoccupied with something else, until we came up with SOMETHING to say to each other. It usually ended up being about Cindy anyway.

And then, there was some sort of breakthrough. It wasn't something that happened all at once, but one day, Cindy and I jumped in the car to go do something and I turned to her and cocked my head to one side.

"Is Mahon in class?"

"Yeah, he is."

"Oh."

Now in type I can't really express this, but there was definitely a little disappointment in the tone of that "oh." Cindy caught the tone and we talked all the rest of the ride about the hows and whys of the fact that I wouldn't have minded washing my hands of him before, and yet somehow I was sad that we weren't hanging out with him.

Although Mahon and Cindy still gross me out a little (seeing my kids date people is going to be ROTTEN) at least now I can agree with what Cindy said to me at first: that Mahon is an interesting, genuinely kind, spiritual person. I still wouldn't say that I know him super-well, but I do find him a pleasure to talk to and be around.

Cindy is delighted by how all of this had played out. Every once in a while, she says to me, "I'm SO glad you like Mahon better now!"

My response? "Yeah, me too."