Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘friendship’

Weekend Friendship Catch Up

Posted in Journeys, tagged on September 27, 2018| 1 Comment »

“There is nothing on this earth to be prized more than true friendship.” – Thomas Aquinas

Kim and me just before we jumped out of an airplane to celebrate my 70th birthday.

            “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.,” – Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Required Sleep Catch Up on Tuesday

            The text from my friend Kim, whom I met 39 years ago, simply said: What are you doing this weekend?

My immediate reply was: Hopefully spending it with you.  And then the telephone rang, and while we talked, she booked a cheap flight from Ogden, Utah, to Phoenix. I was more than happy to drive the two hours to the airport to pick her up.

Kim with a new friend just before we left for our African Safari. — Photo by Pat Bean

Kim and I were work colleagues; rafting and hiking buddies; travel companions (including a 16-day African Safari); and adventure cohorts. One of our best escapades was sky-diving on my 70th birthday, and another was an all-day unpaved, muddy road trip up Nine Mile Canyon in which we got lost, and had to scrape mud off the headlights of her new four-wheel-drive SUV to see to get back down the canyon. We finally made it back to town at midnight– starving. We also climbed to the top of Angel’s Landing in Zion during a snowstorm one year.

This past weekend, Kim got my lazy butt out of my armchair, and up to Kitt Peak National Observatory, followed by dinner at my youngest daughter’s new home in Tucson. Kim knew Trish from when I first started working at the Standard-Examiner newspaper in December of 1979. Back then, my daughter was a rebellious teenager, and I would vent loudly about her occasionally at work. For my part, I watched Kim’s son go from diapers to fatherhood, and today claim him as one of my own.

Kim first came into my life when I was a fairly new single parent, and beginning to try out my unbound wings for the first time. It was a surprise to both of us that we became friends and adventure partners. But the joke between us eventually became that we would always have to be friends as we knew where each other’s skeletons were buried.

Kim and me hamming it up at the photo booth at her son’s wedding reception.

Anyway, Kim’s second day here in Tucson, we drove through Saguaro National Park, which is right next door to where I live – but which I hadn’t yet visited. Then we took in a show, “The Vampire,” at the Gaslight Theater, which had both of us roaring with laughter. There were also a couple of 3 a.m. nights in which Kim and I sat up talking and sipping Jack and Cokes.

By the time I got back home from taking her to the airport on Monday, I was pooped – but feeling mightily blessed for having, and keeping, despite time and distance, such a good friend.

And that was my weekend. I hope everyone else had as good of a one.

Bean Pat: Marfa, Texas https://mrspadillystravels.com/actual-contact-marfa-texas/   As a native Texan with a penchant for oddities, this is a site I will visit the next time I visit family in the Lone Star State. It reminds me of Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo. Thanks for sharing Mrs. Padilly,

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/y8z7553y  Currently, she is writing a book, tentatively titled Bird Droppings, which is about her late-bloomer birding adventures. You can contact her at patbean@msn.com

Read Full Post »

The Write Words: Laughing with a Friend

Posted in Art, Journeys, The Write Words, Writing, tagged , , on March 17, 2018| 2 Comments »

Art by Pat Bean

“Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.” – Paulo Coelho

About My Foibles

            I have a tendency, when given advice, to immediately utter: “Nope, not for me.” It’s a phrase that usually annoys my friend Jean, who often sits with me on my balcony in the evening for a Happy Hour – and is always free with her advice and suggestions.

Jean, who calls me a stubborn old broad, is a year or so younger than my youngest daughter, and last night she said I was the teacher she needed to get through the daily chaos of being a teacher.

“The unteachable teacher mentoring a teacher,” I said, and laughed, a bit embarrassed a bit by her kind words. Then we both laughed.

“It’s good to be able to laugh at our foibles,” she said.

And it was.

The next morning, I wrote about the incident and the comradely laughter in my journal, which got me thinking about how long it took me to accept that I was not ever going to be perfect, and longer still to accept that not being perfect was not only acceptable, but preferable.

Daily writing in my journal helped me come to that conclusion. Writing, which I originally took up as a way to express myself, has also helped me discover myself, a treasure that is as golden as having a good friend who laughs at my foibles.

Bean Pat: Trent’s World https://trentsworldblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/if-we-were-having-coffee-on-the-17th-of-march-2018/?wref=pil Just an ordinary morning, like most of us have, written by a blogger I just started following.

Pat Bean: is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/y8z7553y  Currently, she is writing a book, tentatively titled Bird Droppings, which is about her late-bloomer birding adventures. You can contact her at patbean@msn.com

 

Read Full Post »

The Art of Being Different

Posted in Journeys, tagged , on August 29, 2016| 10 Comments »

“Live your life so when the time comes for the funeral the preacher won’t have to bullshit the peoples.” Baba Olatunji

My friends at the Standard-Examiner, where I ended my 37-year Journalist career gave me this at my retirement party. It was drawn by the newspaper's cartoonist Cal Grondal -- and I love it The image is of me standing on the top of Angel's Landing in Zion as a bird to note my birdwatching passion. It is different -- and I love it.

My friends at the Standard-Examiner, where I ended my 37-year Journalist career gave me this at my retirement party. It was drawn by the newspaper’s cartoonist Cal Grondal — and I love it The image is of me standing on the top of Angel’s Landing in Zion as a bird to note my birdwatching passion. It is different — and I love it.

Simply Being Oneself

I’ve oft quoted the saying: “Live, so that when you die, you know the difference.” Baba Olatunji, the late African drummer whose words started off this blog, said it his way. We’re both saying the same thing, but the words we use to do it are worlds apart.

And this is me and my longtime good friend, Kim, who is as different from me as a hummingbird is from an eagle. The photo was taken at a photo booth that was part of her son's wedding reception. I love it, too.

And this is me and my longtime good friend, Kim, who is as different from me as a hummingbird is from an eagle. The photo was taken at a photo booth that was part of her son’s wedding reception. I love it, too.

Which of course got me wondering about how people can be both so alike, and yet so different.

I started off life wanting to fit in, which was impossible. There was no way I was ever going to have a cashmere sweater set like the girls I wanted to be like. And there was no way, I could not be the first to raise my hand to answer any question the teacher asked – whether I knew it or not, although mostly I knew the answers.

I see myself as once being like Hermione in the Harry Potter books — except she is cute and I was a skinny, freckled girl with tangled, nearly white hair (until it darkened when I had children) who talked too loud.

I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve been told to shush-it.

Then one day, too many years later, I realized that I got loud when I got excited about something, and that my friends accepted me as I was. I even started to pity those people who never got too loud and interrupted conversations; they probably lacked the passion for life that I had.

I then began noticing that the people I liked most were nothing like me. They had their own quirks. Sometimes we filled the holes in the other. They learned from me, and I learned from them.

I then began to accept that it was OK to be different. Accepting that, I finally began to discover my own self. I’m still discovering. And it’s wonderful.

Bean Pat: Monday Motivation http://tinyurl.com/jye74xu Short and sweet, and something you should do for sure.

Read Full Post »