Julie Klam - Friendkeeping: A Field Guide to the People You Love, Hate, and Cant Live Without

ALSO BY JULIE KLAM

Please Excuse My Daughter

You Had Me at Woof

Love at First Bark

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright 2012 by Julie Klam

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Klam, Julie.

Friendkeeping : a field guide to the people you love, hate, and cant live without / Julie Klam.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-101-59701-9

1. Friendship. 2. Interpersonal relations. I. Title.

BF575.F66K53 2012 2012026306

158.2'5dc23

Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

FOR VIOLET JEAN LEO, THE ONLY FRIEND I EVER REALLY MADE

Dear George:

Remember no man is a failure who has friends.

Thanks for the wings!

Love,

Clarence

I TS A W ONDERFUL L IFE

Contents

Introduction

IM A MIDDLE-AGED PERSON who uses the term BFF without irony. I am, to put it simply, crazy about friendships. Its even in my astrological chart. I dont really know what it all means, but Im an Aquarius rising. Apparently, we Aquarius-rising types put the emphasis on friendships first and foremost in our lives. Not only that, but Jupiter is in my eleventh house, and the eleventh is the house of friends. Every psychic and astrologer Ive talked toand believe me when I say Ive talked to a lot of themhas told me the same thing: Friends are very, very valuable to me, and they will always matter a great deal in my life. And who am I to argue with the stars?

Years ago, I read an article about a famous actress who annually takes a group of her best friends on a Caribbean vacation. They have a house right on the beach with a cook and a maid. They play board games, listen to music, drink wine, and eat chocolate chip cookies the size of your head. They give one another beauty treatments, watch movies, and walk on the beach, but mostly they talk and talk and talk. Just the actress and her besties. She said that with her frequent long months of making movies, she didnt get the time to hang out with her friends the way she wanted to, and this was her necessary friendship maintenance. It was a celebration of her friends. Doesnt that sound like heaven? A big cluster of uninterrupted time in paradise with only your friends, and someone else to clean the hair out of the shower drain.

Thats always been my if (when) I hit the lottery fantasy. Fortunately, the kind of work I do rarely places me on location in Belize for eight months, so I can have smaller celebrations of my friends. Like a relaxing picnic in the park on a summer day or a frantic race against time at a sample salewhatever it is, we can talk and talk and talk, and maybe have a chocolate chip cookie the size of your nose.

MY MOTHER CLAIMS I was making playdates from my bassinet in White Plains Hospital. She was always a little puzzled by my ber-sociality. She said that in kindergarten I would take the big avocado-colored hall phone and my class list and sit on the floor and call one kid after another. It didnt matter who, it just mattered that someone came over to play. All you want is a body! my mother declared. I like to think it was egalitarian of me. I know I was lonely, but I loved having a friend over more than anything. Oh, the joys of playing dolls with another dollophile! My two brothers had each other to play with, and wouldnt include me unless their game required a dead body or a stenographer. So I would have a friend over, a very special friend, one who answered the phone and could get a ride.

As long as I have known her, my mother has put her relationship with her sisters before her friends, and this has informed her viewpoint on my friendships. She didnt get my obsession with friends. Though she had tennis friends and horse friends, and might sometimes grab coffee with another kids mother, when she really wanted to talk, shed dial her flesh and blood. I used to think it was weird, like twins who have their own language, but when I got older I realized that I liked hanging out with my mother and her sisters, too. Her youngest sister, Mattie, is actually one of my closest friends. She was even maid of honor at my wedding. But I didnt have that kind of relationship with my brothers when we were kids. Friendships were much more critical to me.

Other than availability, my early friendships were based on a deeply shared belief system: Princesses were excellent to play and draw; Barbies were fun, but forget the shoes; rainbows were good; makeup was to be applied heavily. There were no politics to deal with, except for the one little girl who shocked me by proclaiming that her dad had voted for Nixon.

In the early years, my behavior in friendships tended toward the bossy. I was domineering, yes, but also unusually generous. Id give away my stuff. It drove my mother crazy. Id invite someone over, and the kid would leave with my new jewelry set. I just wanted to make my friends happy. I thought that should include a parting gift. My mother recently pointed out that the object of much of my gifting was a little girl whose father owned most of lower Manhattan. I would like to find her now and see if maybe I could get my Raggedy Ann necklace back... or maybe a penthouse apartment.

Early elementary school was rather pleasant for me. I believed then that the world was somewhat fair and made sense. Kids were friendly unless you bit them. And then, around fourth grade, Mean Girls entered the forest. Oy, the enormous havoc the years of cliques and lemon parties and slam books wreaked on my friendships. My mother assured me that girls were mean only because they were jealous. This made total sense, except I did poorly in school, had perpetually greasy hair, and would destroy any teams chance of winning a game if I was included. Yet somehow my mother convinced me that these flaxen-haired, swim teamgrooving playground idols were threatened by me. This line of thinking of my mothers would pretty much continue through, oh, next Thursday at two p.m.