Gratitude Monday: helping a friend

For Gratitude Monday I’m grateful (again) for friends.

But this time I’m grateful that a friend in Virginia, who’s been going through an upsetting and frustrating time, called me for comfort, perspective and a couple of paragraphs of text that she’s too pissed off to compose in a neutral, considered manner.

(It’s to do with a couple of homeowner associations. If you’ve ever had to deal with one, you’ll know why 1) she’s pissed off and 2)she needed someone not in the middle of it to tone down the text. Even so it took me six rewrites before I got “destruction” down to “damage” and finally to “alteration”. We’re talking trees here.)

Carol Ann and I go back a ways—to before I moved to NoVa. When I did, she was a ready-made friend who could recommend a vet for the cats and places to get ice cream. Both are extremely important.

For years, until I moved to Seattle, she and I met most weekends for breakfast. We’re far enough out how each other earns her living that we can offer entirely off-the-wall viewpoints. Sometimes that’s useful, sometimes not; but it makes a change from what you get every damned day from your colleagues.

So naturally I’m grateful for a friendship that goes way back. But I’m particularly grateful that this time she called on me for help. Usually (lately, especially) it seems the other way round. There have been some phone calls where I couldn’t talk because I was crying.

It felt really good to know that I was the person Carol Ann wanted around when she vented on this, and that I was able to help.

It’s good to have the opportunity to do that, and to have friends who think you’ll deliver for them.