The Best of Old Friends

For a month I have been plowing through Solzhenitsyn's November 1916. His dense style makes finishing a test of self-discipline since it goes on for a thousand pages. On the plus side I am learning a great deal about the people of Russia as the commoners are described during World War I and the lead up to the Communist Revolution.

But as I waded doggedly ahead I came across a couple sentences that made me pause and reflect. "One thing's for sure, no matter how many marvelous people you meet later on, there's no one like the friend of your youth. No one else will ever be so close. If only because there's no one else with whom you can relieve your past in such detail. Your friend knows all about it, has shared it..."

With even brief reflection I have to say Solzhenitsyn has really nailed it for me. Immediately to mind come images of ten or twelve people who fit that category. And I find that the farther back we go the more significant they become. The very earliest through adolescent years somehow have a claim on my friendship that is beyond my explanation. It must be that together we experienced some of those earliest life-shaping experiences that will never be shared with anyone else. They alone know what it was like to be there, to see, to hear, to feel, to smell what will forever be indelibly imprinted on our minds and personalities. We each expereinced the same, but differently so the events have different meanings for each but we each remember and it is ours.

I shared the "church" experience with one adolescent/teen friend. While we had very different family experiences and eventually different life goals we shared much in the social realm. We played sports together and dated girls together. I think we admired each other for our different strengths and challenged each other to succeed.

One warm Sunday evening we either had no dates or took them home early. We drove toether to my house and instead of just stopping to let me off, he quickly turned off the lights and turned off the moter. For several long minutes we sat in silence listening to the crickets. Both of us were feeling we were in the vicinity of a crossroads. We scarecly knew how to say our thoughts. But eventually we got to the question, "Is this all there is?" And each of us rolled that question around as we thought as deeply as we knew how about the direction of life and what were our options.

His conclusion was different from mine in that months later he would say my course is set while I said there is a different way I must take. But our different choices were being made together and that gives our relationship a different quality. We shared a quiet hour when we were being "real" together, dealing with crucial issues in our "real" amateur way. That makes my friend special and one I will treasure always. The author is exactly right, "...there's no one like the friend of your youth."