The Blessing of Friendship
“As I got warmed up, and felt perfectly at home in talk, I heard myself boasting, lying, exaggerating. Oh, not deliberately, far from it. It would be unconvivial and dull to stop and arrest the flow of talk, and speak only after carefully considering whether I was telling the truth.”
I’m at Lake Martin
To me, there is nothing better than an evening of good conversation. As one who now lives alone, I appreciate friends more than ever before. It is my good fortune to have these particular friends, who are sisters, and who are both intelligent and considered. At the same time, they love a good story with a healthy dose of hyperbole. Last night, I heard about “Eunice”, who was a terrible woman from my friends’ childhood. She was so mean-spirited that she devised a scheme of lies and treachery that got their father, a Baptist preacher in bayou country, fired from his job. Eunice didn’t like the fact that the preacher, out of Christian love and charity, had gone over to the Cajun community and invited “those people” to come to church--which, of course, they did. Eunice was described as “weighing not an ounce less than 500 lbs, and the sort of white-witch who’d bring a chocolate sheet-cake to your door and then say something so terrible, you’d be afraid to eat it.” You know Eunice, don’t you? I’ll tuck her away and pull her out when I need a “good southern woman” in one of my stories. How could any writer pass up a character like that?
Good friends, good (but not too good) conversation--the spice of life. I hope you have some of that spice this weekend. As for me, the loons are calling and I must go forth and commune with nature. Those crows are talking some trash, too.
In the wilds,
Jane
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