Kinfolk
Maybe you have a brother and/or a sister. Maybe you don’t but wish you did, You want other humans you can hold to your heart, men and women who know you and treasure you, even if sometimes you drive each other up the wall. Because you and they touch one another, soul to soul.
Some of this is history. You want somebody who knows you, back to your childhood. With siblings you’ve cut your teeth on each other. You’ve coped with the same environment. You’ve had the same parents trying to shape you or neglecting to. With cousins it was the same grandparents on one side of the fence. You’ve grown up with similar descriptions of what’s right and the way things are. When you grow older, you may reject some of them. Your brother or sister or cousin may not. Maybe it’s the other way around. Each of you will form your own descriptions. Maybe you’ll drift apart. Maybe not. Maybe you’ll argue fiercely whenever you see each other. What you share has bound you, even if there was suffering and hardship and fighting in the history of it. You can ponder it together. You can laugh. You can be there for each other. Even after your brother dies, he’ll still be alive in your heart. You’ll speak with him. You’ll hear his voice.
It’s the same with old friends. You can get back in touch after years and both have much to tell. You’ll talk half thru the night. You’ll likely get drunk. The words will sparkle.
Kinship is built of stuff you share: histories, interests, thoughts, desires, attributes, patterns, adventures. The more you keep just to yourself, the less you trust. The more you hold in private, the more you’re alone. Some people manage that way. They become self-sufficient. They deal with abandonment and loss. They stiffen the upper lip. They pay a price.
If you’re open, there’s the possibility of magic, affinity, charisma, magnetism. It’s a big part of erotic attraction, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here. We’re dealing with kinship. You walk into a room and see a person who looks to be like you. You see a brother hitherto unknown to you, and maybe what you see is correct. You’ll have adventures. You’ll end up friends for life.
You could also end up disappointed. This could hurt. A woman comes home from a function of some sort. She’s excited. She met a woman who felt like kin. The two of them talked. Many things, many feelings they had in common. The woman thinks she’s made a friend, a good friend.
It wasn’t to be. When they meet again the air has cooled. Who knows why? The other woman draws back half a pace. For a few years they maintain a friendship of sorts, a dinner or two with their husbands, that kind of thing, until it too dwindles away. They may have remained colleagues. They were no longer kin, if they ever were.
So what do we want, we geezers? What do you want? Do you want to make new friends to replace the ones you’ve lost? Does it matter that down the road a few months your new friend too could be gone? Damned right it does.
Kin entails risk. Kin entails friendship. Friendship entails obligation. Sometimes you need to give up stuff, time, commitment. You may need to travel across a continent to lend a hand. When you get there your friend may die on you.
How much do we need one another? How much do we need friendship and kinship? What if out on the road there was a fellowship of geezers, laughing and grumbling, drooling and farting, sharing struggles and giving each other hope. Might it help. Might it make a few moments richer? Might you check it out?
According to Substack, this post has the capacity for things called discussion threads. The geezer assumes that a reader starts the thread. But the geezer is technically inept, so who knows? In any case, if you can give it a try. Let’s see if we can get something going, maybe something a little rowdy. Let’s see if we can spice up these final years.