Each One

There are lot of ways to know people.

There’s the Facebook kind of knowing, the Instagram kind. You know the names of their children, and their dogs. The seminal events, the proud moments, the way their cat curls over a sofa when it rains.

Then there’s the pass-you-in-the-hallway, we-work-together kind. The kind you might chat with at the water cooler, the kind you lean against the door-frame with, talking over the day.

Which is fine.

And then there are Friends in their strata. The Christmas-party kind, the we-went-to-college-together, we-were-roommates-kind. And there are the ones-you-have-for-dinner, or go-out-to-dinner-with.

Which is good.

But of these, some become the staying-too-late kind, the kind you wish would never leave. The ones who call and say, “Is it okay if we just come over?” They are the ones you start too many conversations with, and these all at once; the kind you go on trips with, who know your parents, who drive over in a snow storm just because they want to. They are the ones who offer to do your laundry when the washer breaks, who can tell how you are by the way you say “Hello,” who say things like “I’ve been meaning to ask you” and “We’ve got to talk about” and “I just need to know what you think about this.”

The kind that help you make sense of the world. The kind you really know, and they know you.

Which is wonderful.

But there is another kind, sometimes. They can arrive in a small variety of ways. They come–by invitation or surprise–and stay for years. They are loud and demanding at the beginning; they require all manner of adjustment. They are fatiguing and relentlessly present; they cost enormous amounts of money. They break things. They make messes.

They are complexity of personality; they remind one, uncomfortably, of oneself. They are alarming; they steal your sleep. They require talking-to and listening-to and occasional, serious discomfort.

And they are–if we are noticing–windows onto dissimilarity, kaleidoscopic glimpses into Something True– something that is also True of the Facebook friend with the draped cat, the colleague leaning against the door-jamb, the friend you could talk with forever if only you didn’t have to sleep.

The Something True about every person born or not into this world: Each One is the Only One.

If all goes as expected, we get eighteen or so years’ worth of a fairly keen gaze into the mysterious singularity of Each One–more, if we can manage a friendship.

I’ve decided it’s best to pay attention.