How does friendship hold up in the face of social media and full lives?

I am sitting with a group of mothers of infants and toddlers at my local co-op’s natural parenting meeting, wondering what kind of friend I am.  I’ve known the group’s organizer, Meg, for several years.  She asked me to come speak almost two years ago.  It’s taken that long for me to fit it in.  I push that thought from my mind and listen to the first question she asks me for the benefit of the others.

“How do you manage your time?”

I briefly mention my writing schedule, my dogmatic refusal to admit my children into my office space before 7 am, my early bedtime.

Meg pulls me back to the issues facing the mothers in her group:  managing time in the face of loneliness.  Facebook, she mentions, takes enormous amounts of time, but it helps to battle a young mothers’ isolation.

“I avoid Facebook,” I confess.  I used to say that with an air of Luddite pride — a bold, in-your-face proclamation of the benefits of a low-electron diet, casting aspersions on all others who fritter their hours away on social media.  But today, in this moment, I feel my body shrinking away from the group, my shoulders pulling in.

Meg congratulates me on avoiding the addiction.  But I don’t feel self-congratulatory.  I feel like a hypocrite.  In the last few years, my writing has reached an entirely new audience.  My weekly readership is at an all time high.  I’ve met some amazing people.  And it’s all owing to social media.  Well, social media was the means of transportation.  In truth, it is all owing to friends who use social media.  I go on once a week and post my stories and recipes, and my friends move it forward from there, sharing, re-posting, telling their friends and family, doing the ground work for bringing in new readers.  Meanwhile, I’m back at the farm cutting beef stew, or teaching Saoirse her next math lesson, or coaxing Ula into doing her eye exercises.  My friends do the work while I move on with life.

I have a medical excuse for avoiding social media. Prolonged use of any of the major social media platforms (five minutes or longer) results in petit mal seizures.  They’re not a big deal.  Mild seizures have always been part of my life, a gentle reminder when something is out of balance.  In a way, they are a gift.  Especially when it comes to social media.  They give me an excuse to let my friends do all the work.  I hang up my FB Handicap tag, and I don’t do social media.  But my friends do.  Thankfully.  Today, I’m feeling guilty about this.

After the natural parenting meeting concludes, I meet with another friend, Joellyn, for lunch.  She, Saoirse and I are propped on stools beside the window of the co-op.  We’re swapping tales about work and farm, diet and health, great books.  She pulls out her iPhone and orders a new series of books for Saoirse.  “A gift,” she tells us both.  “I like to spoil your children.”

Joellyn has been inviting me to meet for lunch for three years.  This is the first moment I’ve made the time to sit down with her.

In the course of our conversation, I spend a lot of time talking to her about Luke, the dog we’d lost a few days prior, outlining my game plan for recovering him.  She listens patiently.  Then my shoulders droop again.  “I feel like its my fault,” I confess to her.  “I was too busy.  I was running too hard.   I told my friends I’d take care of their dog.  If I’d been home, he wouldn’t have run away.”  What kind of friend am I?

My confession to her lifts my burden this afternoon, and I depart from her company with a lighter heart, and an inner sense of confidence that I’ll somehow recover this lost dog.

I rejoice when I walk in the door to find a voice message from someone living on the other side of the state forest that surrounds our house.  They’ve found Luke.  The next message is from an elderly woman I met while looking for the dog along the northwest perimeter of the forest.  She wants to know if I’ve had any luck yet.  She’d like me to call.  She’d like me to visit.  She was nice.  She thought I was nice.  But I don’t feel like I can.  I don’t feel like I have the time.  Saoirse and I run back out to the car and drive to the other house where Luke was found.  I liked them, too.  They’re the kind of people, like me, who will open their home to any dog.  I get that.  I give them sausages and homemade bacon in thanks.  I feel like I should go back and visit them again someday.  But I don’t know when I’ll find the time.  What kind of friend am I?

I wonder if I should love less; if I should accept fewer souls into my life.  Our society and social connections have expanded exponentially in recent years, and I don’t think our physical bodies and emotional abilities can possibly keep pace.  If I narrowed my world to a tiny sphere, like the members of my community may have had 150 years ago, it would be easier to take care of each person in my life like a true friend.

But the heart is an involuntary muscle.  No matter what my brain may direct, my heart will love far more people than my physical body can support.

I push these thoughts from my mind to have a celebratory glass of wine with Bob when he and Ula come home.  We’re all in a festive mood.  We’ve recovered a lost dog.  We made it through another chaotic day.  The celebration doesn’t last long.  I’m too tired.  I go up to bed.

It is 1:30 in the morning when I hear the first bump.  I wonder if Luke has hurt himself.  I call to him, worried that he may have sustained some injury from his long journey.  He doesn’t come to me, and the bump happens again, and then again, and again.  Ula is in bed with me.  The bump is coming from where Bob is sleeping.  “Bob!”  I shout into the darkness, them fumble my way to his side.  His arm is cold, soaked with sweat.  It is thrashing up and down.  “Oh, God, please!  Bob!”  I grope madly for the bedside lamp and switch it on.  His eyes are open, but he doesn’t see me.  His body is thrashing, his hand beating into the wall beside him.

Within seconds, Saoirse is beside me.  “What’s wrong?”

There is something familiar in what I see.  I don’t know the sweat, but I know that rhythmic flailing.  “It’s a seizure,” I find the words.  “But a big one.”  I remember my thoughts from earlier in the day.  A seizure is a gift, a reminder that something is out of balance.  His glucometer and insulin pen are on his bedside table.  I take a guess at an insulin overdose and run for the honey jar while he continues to thrash.  I climb over him and insert my index finger along the inside of his mouth.  His teeth are clenched.  I know I shouldn’t be doing this.  But I’m also pretty certain that I can insert the honey along the inside of his cheek, and some might get into his system.  I spoon it into him, then run for the glucagon gun, an emergency kit that we keep with his diabetes supplies.  In all the time we’ve confronted this condition, I’ve never had to use it.  I flip open the kit, which I haven’t looked at in years, and discover a small bottle, a syringe,  and an instruction sheet that is 24 inches long, in 5 point font —  Impossible for panicked 41-year-old eyes in the middle of the night.  I do my best, but the needle breaks.  Meanwhile, Saoirse calls 9-1-1 while Ula hides under a blanket.

Then Bob’s voice calls from his corner.  “What’s the problem?”  He asks, his voice calm.  The honey must have worked.  He has heard Saoirse speaking with the dispatcher.

I’m at his side now, trying to make sense of his glucometer and his test strips.  Social media is hard enough.  This technology is damned near impossible for me to operate.  “Everything’s fine,” he tells me.  “What’re you doing?”

“You just had a big seizure.  We need to test your blood.”  My voice is tight.

“Everything’s fine.”  There is a tone of admonishment in his voice.  Defensiveness.  In his mind, this didn’t happen.  And his wife is just a batty fruitcake who needs his constant calming.  It is our theater.  He is playing his role.  I’m supposed to play mine.  I humor him.

“It’s fine now,” I tell him.  “But humor me.  Let’s check your blood.”  He is coherent enough to turn the little machine on.

“Show me your last reading,” I direct.  He scrolls up.  570.

“That’s not possible!  Were you sneaking sweets?”  I ask.

“I thought it was odd,” he said.  “But I’d had watermelon in the afternoon, so I figured it might have been possible.”

“Watermelon doesn’t result in a blood sugar spike that high.”

He is fully awake now.  “I took 16 units of insulin before bed,” he suddenly looks alarmed.  The meter must have given a faulty reading, resulting in him overdosing.

The paramedics arrive and hook him up to a dextrose IV.  Ula has recovered from her fear and jumped into action, preparing him a plate of rice crackers and almond butter to balance out the dextrose.  Once everything settles down, we get the girls calm enough to return to bed.  The paramedics have left me with instructions to monitor him for dips and spikes over the next few hours.  He goes to sleep.  I keep watch.

When dawn breaks, I am certain he’s okay, but that he needs rest.  So I drive down to the farm to let out the turkeys, letting him sleep in, hoping the ride will calm my nerves.  I want to go back to bed myself, but the adrenalin is still pumping through my veins.

I need a hug, I think to myself as the car winds down the road. Everything is fine. There’s no need to worry any longer.  In truth, Bob had a safe and healthy reaction to a potentially dangerous situation.  The seizure woke me up.  It got him the help he needed.  Good old seizures.  But still,  I just need a hug, to let a few tears release from my body, to let the adrenalin wash away.  Mom and Dad are gone on vacation, and I don’t want to worry them by calling.

I turn another corner in the road and I wonder who I could go to in their absence; who wouldn’t mind me knocking on their door at the crack of dawn; who would lend me a shoulder to cry on so that I could go home and rest; who would understand when, as usual, my visit would be brief, because I am the sort of soul who must keep moving.

As I drive, I begin tallying my neighbors and friends as I pass them.  I could get a hug there,  I think as I drive past one friend’s house, or there.  Or there.  Or there.  Twelve different people along the route.  Twelve different sets of open arms, sturdy shoulders, kind hearts.  And that was just in the rural stretch between home and farm.  Suddenly, the road is no longer a road.  It is a giant web, threaded with powerful strands of love that stretch in every direction.  No matter where I turn on this road, whether I stay in town or drive outward, there are more threads, more hugs, and when the car can drive no further, the threads pick up in social media, where there is almost always someone with a few seconds to offer kindness and wisdom to someone in distress.  In just the past 24 hours, that web held me up as I searched for a lost dog, as I sought relief from my daily routine, as I tried to make sense of my place in this world, as I hungered for a few minutes to simply love myself.   And now, it is spread out before me when I must to release the fear that I need to hide, for the moment anyhow, from my own family.

I pull into the driveway at the farm, wander out to the turkeys, unhook the electric fences and climb in.  They are happy to see me.  We visit for a few minutes before they take to running across the pasture, testing their wings beneath the first direct rays of sunlight.  Then I leave and drive down the road.  I have to stop at the post office for something, so I climb the stairs to Kate and Joe’s apartment.  She is still tousled from sleep, but I get the hug I need.  I leave a few tears on her robe.  Then, my shoulders loosened from the release, I drive home.  The house is quiet.  I climb the stairs and wake Bob for his next blood test.  His numbers are back to normal.  I fall into bed.

Within moments, my body is floating, deeply relaxed, happy to greet sleep.  And the question that has been plaguing me for two days now comes back into my mind:  What kind of friend am I?

A damned lucky one.

Because I know what kind of friends I have.