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I Will Lift You From The Waters

When we nurture and celebrate friendships, we are rounding out and enriching our life experience. Our circle of friends can stimulate our creative drive, challenge us to grow, support and lift us up in our darkest moments, hold us accountable if we stray too far afield. Even help salvage a marriage. The friends we choose can be our finishing touch. To pay homage to John, Paul, George and Ringo: On this long and winding road, we can work it out with a little help from our friends.

Great friends are not easy to come by. Some outgoing, intriguing individuals may drop unexpectedly into our lives, but more often than not, some effort is required. We must be on the lookout wherever our daily lives lead us. My friend-search mechanism is always tuned in, alerting me to anyone who may inspire me to take the next step, a step which demands a bit of extroversion and self-confidence: making contact and believing I have something to offer.

Friendships can blossom anywhere -- within our work communities, in places of worship, at a bus stop, through mutual acquaintances or our children's lives. One of our family's dearest friendships sparked in line at a local copy center.

When we moved our family from the Bay Area to the Los Angeles basin, our Northern California circle of friends expressed alarm, as though we were migrating to a snake pit, a cultural wasteland. To many, LA has a reputation as being a center of flagrant wealth, superficiality, exploitative relationships and limited values. (Hollywood does produce its share of lost souls, whose lives are spewed across the headlines, exploited, and sometimes exalted, by the media.) Though this stereotype does exist, it is a minuscule segment of a lovely population. So we set out to find depth, values and culture, and a great neighborhood to raise our boys and to nurture new friendships. And to prove our Northern California friends wrong.

After much questioning of anyone familiar with the Los Angeles area, we settled into a small community twenty minutes from the Hollywood scene -- yet in total contrast -- supporting community picnics and parades, good neighborhood schools, very few Jaguars and even fewer nannies. And we immediately began seeking out a support system for our boys (surrogate aunts, uncles and cousins) and for ourselves.

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