Friendship Group

“I don’t like holding Carrie’s hands at ballet. They’re squishy like rubber bands. I only want to hold Ella’s hand.”

And so it begins.

“Well, if you are standing next to Ella, you can hold her hand,” I reason. “But if you are standing next to Carrie, you have to hold her hand, otherwise,” and here is where I feel myself wince at what I am about to say, “Carrie won’t have anyone to hold her hand and she might feel left out.”

When my sister and I were in elementary school, we were both chosen to participate in “Friendship Group,” a brainchild of the school counselor which served to bring together children who had trouble making friends with children who didn’t. Essentially it was a social skills group, operating under the assumption that the more socially adept children could model positive friendship behaviors and, essentially, help the less adept children become more, well, likeable, I guess. My sister and I were chosen because we were strong friend material, although I really think we were chosen because we were thoughtful, empathic and prone to taking on responsibility for the feelings of others— often to our own detriment. And if Friendship Group served to make the other children more friendship proficient, it also served to intensify our feelings of responsibility for the happiness of others. Just a few weeks ago, my sister–a nearly 30 year-old NICU nurse and graduate student at an Ivy League university–called me in tears because she was consumed with guilt over her intentional exclusion of a classmate from her high-powered study group. The group couldn’t handle the logistics of another member’s schedule, it was functioning well and simply needed not to be altered. “I feel awful,” Rebecca wailed. ” Now who is she going to study with?”

The two of us have only one thing to say to each other in response to situations like this, and so I said it to her. “Fuck Friendship Group,” I said, as I have countless times over the years. “Fuck Friendship Group” is our mantra, and we say it to remind ourselves that we can’t be held responsible for the feelings of others at the expense of our own. We say it when one of us wants to end a relationship, assert herself at work, decline an invitation, or make any one of a number of tortured decisions that might negatively impact other people’s psyches. We say it to remind ourselves that sometimes the person you are killing with kindness is yourself.

Which is why I stumble with my responses when Gracie tells me, as she does more and more now, that she doesn’t like this person, or doesn’t want to play with that person. “You don’t have to like so-and-so,” I tell her, “but you must be kind to her.” But what does “be kind” mean, exactly? Play with her even if you want to play with someone else, someone who you feel a rare and wonderful connection with, someone who makes your heart sing? I just don’t know. What I do know is that Gracie was born into a broken world, a world that is brimming with anger and hatred and competition and getting what you want when you want it. A world that values beauty and wealth and able-bodiedness and turns its head, again and again, away from the sight of imperfection and ailment. What I do know is that I feel I must, somehow, impart to her the essential truth that we are on this planet to try to ease each other’s journeys, when we can.

Yesterday Gracie came to church with me, and because she didn’t want to go down the hill to Sunday School, and because it was the first Sunday of the month, she had communion for the first time. She stood next to me in the circle we all form by coming out of the pews and standing in the aisles of our old and beautiful one-room church. She held my hand, and then she held her bread, and ate it, and then she held her tiny goblet of juice, and drank that. Our minister and dear friend, Steve, reminded us of many things during those fleeting moments of protestant ritual. He reminded us that the atoms inside the wheat and water and berries we receive are as old as time. He reminded us that people made the bread, and made the juice, and that we are grateful for their labor. And he reminded us that Jesus asked us to love one another as he had loved us. I fail at this. I fail at it every single day. But despite Friendship Group and all its lingering damage, despite my desire to raise a self-assured and emotionally healthy daughter, I still hear those words and believe they are instructions for a meaningful life. Which is why I will continue to insist on kindness from Grace, all the while trying to figure out for myself exactly what that means.