Close Friendships

I met Lou in the spring of 2019. I was recently widowed, trying to find my place in the world without my wife of 39 years. I met him on the tennis court. He was the convener of a mixed doubles drop-in session. I was picking up activities I had not done since I was a teenager. The funeral director had warned me that I needed a social network, that otherwise I would just hang around the house and fade away. We had just moved to a new city four months previous, so this was a concern for me. I had written "Tennis? Bridge?" on a note pad as ideas for meeting people.

I was instructed to show up at the drop-in with a can of tennis balls. They were in short supply during COVID, and the only ones I could find at the store were fuzzy things that didn't bounce very well. I was also overweight, so slow, and I had not hit a ball since 1974. But Lou and the other players welcomed me. Somewhere in the 90 minute session I surprised myself by hitting a forehand over the net with reasonable speed and accuracy. Rob, another, player, nuch better than me, remarked "You probably hit shots like that when you were eighteen. That'll bring you back." And it did.

More than that, Lou asked, "Do you play bridge?" I learned the game from my aunt when I was 9 years old. I played it with my longtime friend Bob on the school bus. Did I play? Yes, but again I had not played in a great long while. He said that his partner could not play with him in the club because she refused to be vaccinated. I said yes, but I would have to get up to speed on bidding. He knew that, so we met and he explained. He sat me down for a few sessions, and we tried playing on line together. I think I earned a quarter of a match point (that's not very much!) one day on "Bridge Base Online."

In competitive duplicate bridge, players reveal their bridge personalities, and probably their overal personalities, very quickly. After a few wild over-bids from me, Lou said, "You were never a wall-flower, were you?"

He was right. In fact I bid quite a bit like my father, who used to say that if the other players passed, there must be a contract in there for his partnership. Gradually I learned the discipline of bidding more accurately, and Lou relaxed. Both of us are competitive, but in an easygoing way. I think we have only missed two or three Wednesdays in the past six years.

On one of those days I took my granddaughter to Emergency at the hospital. I phoned Lou to explain and of course he understood right away. As we waited at Emergency, my daughter,used to the imperative of being at Wednesday bridge on time, looked at her watched and gasped, "It's almost one o'clock! You're due at bridge!" I said not to worry because I had phoned Lou and explained about my granddaughter. My daughter laughed, and said, "And the need of a grandchild is an acceptable reason to miss bridge?" I nodded. "A tsunami?" she asked. I said no. "Threat of nuclear war?" Again no. "But say the word grandchild and everyone understands?" I said she had grasped the principle.

The club is a community, a group of communities in fact. There is the Wednesday bridge group, mostly the same people, week after week. If someone misses a week there are questions about where they are. When they come back, they are asked for an explanation. Again, grandchildren are the only valid reason to miss a week.

All the players have their own individual traits and characters as players, and you get to know them quickly, because it is part of understanding the bidding. One may be cautious, another bold, like me. Still others may lie in wait to ambush an unwary opponent. It is duplicate bridge, so once a hand is played, each player places their hand back in a slot of the board and the board is passed to another table to be played. The scores are entered on sheets called "travellers," which stay with each board, so that when you mark your score for that board, you can see what other people bid, and what they made. At the end of the day, the scores are entered into a computer program that compares how each partnership fared with each hand, then the results are emailed out. Very often, as the boards make the rounds of the room, I hear something like "Oh who would bid that? Paul of course."

Of course, of course. I am always, invariably myself, because, of course, all the other roles are already taken. Some players are almost silent. Not the case for me and Lou. Every once in a while the hard-working director says "Paul and Lou, be quiet!" Or "Table 4 be quiet!" If talking is a vice, Lou and I are vicious sinners.

I noticed soon enough that he favored Hawaiian shirts, so I thought well, I will wear those too. The tennis pro, seeing us, enjoyed that, and pointed out that women often arrange to dress similarly on the court. We made a habit of it. I found it kept morale up during the winter. Of course other players pretended to find it irritating, saying things like, "I will need sunglasses," or "You are trying to distract us and beat us that way."

Lou and I tend to arrive close to time. Most other players are already in their seats by the time we get there. One day I was entering the club and I noticed that the man in front of me, who often remarked on our shirts, was wearing a Hawaiian shirt for the first time. I followed him into the main room. Everyone was wearing Hawaiian outfits. One woman, a retired dance teacher and model, was wearing a grass skirt. Unbeknownst to us, they had declared an "island day," to celebrate our wearing Hawaiian shirts all year! What a club!

I have learned the stories of most of the players, and they are all fascinating. Lou's story is my favorite. A kind, considerate, intelligent man, struck by many losses, he is cheerful and affable just the same.

Are we different in our backgrounds and interests? Of course. Lou played football in high school. I was invited to try out, but I declined because I wanted to protect my fingers for the piano. Lou laughs at that. Imagine, he says, the coach thinking finally he had found a good candidate to play offensive guard and the boy wouldn't try out because of the piano.

Lou knows just about everything about cars. I know next to nothing. We both like history. We like some of the same movies. We come from different religions. None of those differences matters a whit.

Do we disagree about some things or sometimes fail to understand each other? Of course. That proves our humanity and individuality. I think that the only thing any of us needs to watch out for is if we are too attached to certain opinions. We all have opinions. When I am so attached to an opinion that it gets in the way of my enjoying talking to someone with a different point of view, I think it is best for me to keep my opinion and let go of my attachment to it. Being with people is much more important to me than my attachment to opinions.

Last week, one of the club's regular players died in hospice care. Her partner read a tribute to us. She said that they were both Germans who had gone through the war, and in Germany when you get a good friend, you work hard to keep that friendship forever. She said that she and her partner were in a small German bubble here.

What she described is not just true for Germans. I said to Lou that he and I are in a bubble. It could be called an "Italian bubble"--I have no Italian heritage but I speak Italian, and he has Italian heritage but only speaks a moderate amount. But is more than that, so much more.

Bridge is a wonderful game and pastime. Most of the bridge players are my age or older. In North America, not as many young people play bridge as used to be the case. So it is possible that, one day, bridge may be out of fashion. But friendship never will be.