Power of Friendship

Jacques was waiting for me at a metro stop in central Paris. He wore the same jacket that I remembered, with the same patch from a band whose name I couldn’t pronounce. I hadn't seen him for ten years, and I hadn't been back to Paris for eleven. “Hello,” he greeted me, rubbing his beard wearily. “You're a long way from home.” “Home is a long way from Paris,” I answered. “You, meanwhile, didn't even have to take a bus.” He looked at me a long time, studying me. He needed to decide whether he still recognized me after ten long years. “Mon ami,” he decided, and he hugged me like the old friend I still am.

“That's my football club! My football club! I would recognize that crest from a thousand miles away.” And, indeed, I did. Five thousand, actually. When I saw the picture of the boy on the news, smiling and covered in chocolate from a party in a celebration I'd never heard of, I didn't immediately think, “Oh, how interesting!” or “Goodness, lucky child!” My first thought was: that's my football club! The jacket he wore, smudged and smeared with sweets, bore the unmistakable crest of my local football club. I have no idea how he came to have it, but in every picture, there it was, along with a poster of our starting forward on his empty bedroom wall. I called the photographer credited with the photo, and she told me the boy lived at an orphanage in the capital city. With a little detective work, I found out its address. And I sent that boy every last team jersey, cap, sweatshirt, pajama bottom, teddy bear, and sock I had.

I've never known anyone who won the lottery. So when Stephanie told me that she had, I know how to act. “That's wonderful,” I said. “I know,” she said. But she told me she wanted me to know, because she wasn't sure if she was strong enough to do what needed to be done alone, which was to pay off and renovate her Dad’s house. I understood then. The next eighteen months were great. We worked every day, having the papers drawn up and picking out landscaping we wanted to add. Stephanie worked hard. Together, we put in many late nights over lukewarm coffee, because that’s what friends do. When we finally got the papers signed and the house was complete, she told me it felt like a fairy tale. And I think the reason fairy tales with heroes and dragons are so popular is because they know something that deep down we all believe. Which is that dragons can be slayed, together.

I have friends, but “friends” is not all they are. I have family. Family with different blood than mine. Family with different names and skin and tongues. I have mentors. Mentors that value me enough to share the most sacred thing that someone can share, which is their knowledge. I have teammates. Powerful men and women who see my success as their own and want to enable me. I have confidantes. Vaults of trust that stand willing to share my burdens. I may have friends, but I have a whole lot more, too.