Judith Viorst

Judith Viorst

[Judith Viorst was born in 1936 and has established herself as an accomplished writer who has covered a wide range of topics in her profession. She is a regular contributing editor to Redbook magazine. The essay that follows first, appeared in her regular column of that magazine. The essay seems to enlarge upon an observation by the American philosopher, George Santayana, who once wrote: "Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another; people are friends in spots." Ms. Viorst also writes humorous verse and books for children.]

[Judith Viorst (born February 2, 1931) is an American author, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher.[1] She is perhaps best known[citation needed] for her children's literature, such as The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (about the death of a pet) and the Alexander series of short books.

In the latter part of the 1970s, after two decades of writing for children and adults, Viorst turned to the study of Freudian psychology. In 1981, and after six years of study at Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, she became a research graduate there.]

Women are friends, I once would have said, when they totally love and support and trust each other, and bare to each other the secrets of their souls, and run—no questions asked—to help each other, and tell harsh truths to each other (no you can’t wear that dress unless you lose ten pounds first) when harsh truths must be told.

Women are friends, I once would have said, when they share the same affection for Ingmar Bergman, plus train rides, cats, warm rain, charades, Camus, and hate with equal ardor Newark and Brussels sprouts and Lawrence Welk and camping.

In other words, I once would have said that a friend is a friend all the way, but now I believe that’s a narrow point of view. For the friendships I have and the friendships I see are functions, meet different needs and range from those as

all-the-way as the friendship of the soul sisters men?tioned above to that of the most nonchalant and casual playmates. Consider these varieties of friendship:

1. Convenience friends. These are women with whom, if our paths weren’t crossing all the time, we’d have no particular reason to be friends: a next-door neighbor, a woman in our car pool, the mot her of one of our children’s closest friends or maybe some mommy with whom we serve juice and cookies each week at the Glenwood Co-op Nursery. Convenience friends are convenient indeed. They’ll lend us their cups and silverware for a party. They’ll drive our kids to soccer when we’re sick. They’ll take us to pick up our car when we need a lift to the garage. They’ll even take our cats when we go on vacation. As we will for them.

But we don’t, with convenience friends, ever come too close or tell too much; we maintain our public face and emotional distance. “Which means,” says Elaine, “that I’ll talk about being overweight but not about being depressed. Which means I’ll admit being mad but not blind with rage. Which means that I might say that we’re pinched this month but never that I’m, worried sick over money.”

But which doesn’t mean that there isn’t sufficient value to be found in these friendships of mutual aid, in convenience friends.

2. Special-interest friends. These friendships aren’t intimate, and they needn’t involve kids or silverware or cats. Their value lies in some interest jointly shared. And so we may have an office friend or a yoga friend or a tennis friend or a friend from the Women’s Democratic Club.

“I’ve got one woman friend” says Joyce, “who likes, as I do, to take psychology courses. Which makes it nice for me—and nice for her. It’s fun to go with someone you know and it’s fun to discuss what you’ve learned, driving back from the classes.” And for the most part, she says, that’s all t hey discuss.

“I’d say that what we’re doing is doing together, not being together,” Suzanne says of her Tuesday-doubles friends. “It’s mainly a tennis relationship, but we play together well. And I guess we all need to have a couple of playmates.”

I agree.

My playmate is a shopping friend, a woman of marvelous taste, a woman who knows exactly where to buy what, and furthermore is a woman who always knows beyond a doubt what one ought to by buying. I don’t have the time to keep up with what’s new in eyesh adow, hemlines and shoes and whether the smock look is in or finished already. But since (oh, shame!) I care a lot about eyeshadow, hemlines and shoes, and since I don’t want to wear smocks if the smock look is finished, I’m very glad to have a shopping fr iend.

3. Historical friends. We all have a friend who knew us when...maybe way back in Miss Meltzer’s second grade, when our family lived in that three-room flat in Brooklyn, when our dad was out of work for seven months, when our brother Allie got in that fight where they had to call the police, when our sister married the endodontist from Yonkers, and when, the morning after we lost our virginity, she was the first, the only, friend we told.

The years have gone by and we’ve gone separate ways and we’ve little in common now, but we’re still an intimate part of each other’s past. And so whenever we go to Detroit we always go to visit this friend of our girlhood. Who knows how we talked before our voice got un-Brooklyned. Who knows what we ate before we learned about artichokes. And who, by her presence, puts us in touch with an earlier part of ourself, a part of ourself it’s important never to lose.

“What this friend means to me and what I mean to her,” says Grace, “is have a sister without sibling rivalry. We know the texture of each other’s lives. She remembers my grandmother’s cabbage soup. I remember the way her uncle played the piano. There’s simply no other friend who remembers those things.”

4. Crossroads friends. Like historical friends, our crossroads friends are important for what was—for the friendship we shared a at a crucial, now past, time of life. A time, perhaps, when we roomed in a college together; or worked as eager young singles in the Big City together; or went together, as my friend Elizabeth and I did, through pregnancy, birth and that scary first year of new motherhood.

Crossroads friends forge powerful links, links strong enough to endure with not much more contact than once-a-year letters at Christmas. And out of respect for those crossroads years, for those dramas and dreams we once shared, we will always be friends.

5. Cross-generational friends. Historical friends and cross-roads friends seem to maintain a special kind of intimacy—dormant but always ready to be revived—and thoug h we may rarely meet, whenever we do connect, it’s personal and intense. Another kind of intimacy exists in the friendships that form across generations in what one woman calls her daughter-mother and her mother-daughter relationships.

Evelyn’s friend is her mother’s age—“but I share so much more than I ever could with my mother”—a woman she talks to of music, of books and of life. “What I get from her is the benefit of her experience. What she gets—and enjoys—from me is a youthful perspective. It’s a pleasure for both of us.”

I have in my own life a precious friend, a woman of 65 who has lived very hard, who is wise, who listens well; who has been where I am and can help me understand it; and who represents not only an ultimate ideal mother to me but also the person I’d like to be when I grow up.

In our daughter role we tend to do more than our share of self-revelation; in our mother role we tend to receive what’s revealed. It’s another kind of pleasure—playing wise mother to a questing younger person. It’s another very lovely kind of friendship.

6. Part-of-a-couple friends. Some of the women we call our friends we never see alone—we see them as part of a couple at couples’ parties. And though we share interests in many things and respect each other’s views, we aren’t moved to deepen the relationship. Whatever the reason, a lack of time or—and this is more likely—a lack of chemistry, our friendship remains in the context of a group. But the fact that our feeling on seeing each other is always, “I’m so glad she’s here” and the fact that we spend half the evening talking together says that this too, in its own way, counts as a friendship. (Other part-of-a-couple friends are the friends that came with the marriage, and some of these are friends we could live without. But sometimes, alas, she married our husband’s best friend; and sometimes, alas, she is our husband’s best friend. And so we find ourselves dealing with her, somewhat against our will, in a spirit of what I’ll call reluctant friendship.)

7. Men w ho are friends. I wanted to write just of women friends, but the women I’ve talked to won’t let me—they say I must mention man-woman friendships too. For these friendships can be just as close and as dear as those that we form with women. Listen to Lucy’s description of one such friendship:

“We’ve found we have things to talk about that are different from what he talks about with my husband and different from what I talk about with his wife. So sometimes we call on the phone or meet for lunch. There are similar intellectual interests—we always pass on to each other the books that we love—but there’s also something tender and caring too.” In a couple of crises, Lucy says, “he offered himself for talking and for helping. And when someone died in his family he wanted me there. The sexual, flirty part of our friendship is very small, but some—just enough to make it fun and different.” She thinks—and I agree—that the sexual part, though small, is always some, is always there when a man and a woman are friends.

It’s only in the past few years that I’ve made friends with men, in the sense of a friendship that’s mine, not just part of two couples. And achieving with them the ease and the trust I’ve found with women friends has value indeed. Under the dryer at home last week, putting on mascara and rouge, I comfortably sat and talked with a fellow named Peter. Peter, I finally decided, could handle the shock of me minus mascara under the dryer. Because we care for each other. Because we’re friends.

8. There are medium friends, and pretty good friends, and very good friends indeed, and these friendships are defined by their level of intimacy. And what we’ll reveal at each of these levels of intimacy is calibrated with care. We might tell a medium friend, for example, that yesterday we had a fight with our husband. And we might tell a pretty good friend that this fight with our husband made us so mad that we slept on the couch. And we might tell a very good friend that the reason we got so mad in that fight that we slep t on the couch had something to do with that girl who works in his office. But it’s only to our very best friends that we’re willing to tell all, to tell what’s going on with that girl in his office. The best of friends, I still believe, totally love and support and trust each other, and bare to each other the secrets of their souls, and run—no questions asked—to help each other, and tell harsh truths to each other when they must be told. But we needn’t agree about everything (only 12-year-old girl friend s agree about everything ) to tolerate each other’s point of view. To accept without judgment, to give and to take without ever keeping score. And to be there, as I am for them and as they are for me, to comfort our sorrows, to celebrate our joys. (1882 words)

(Selected from Guidelines: A Cross-Cultural Reading/Writing Text, by Ruth Spack. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.) Questions for Discussion

1. Does the author really define friendship? How has her definition changed over the years, if any?

2. How does Viorst’s use of the word, we, contribute to the “intimacy” of the essay?

3. What purpose did the author have in writing this essay?

4. It is apparent that the essay is directed toward women. (Redbook is a magazine aimed largely at women between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five.) How would Viorst have changed the categories of the essay if it was directed at young men in the same age category? Would her examples have been different?

5. What effect does Viorst’s use of qu otations have?

6. How would you describe the tone of the essay?

Exploring Ideas

1. What is your own idea of friendship? Give examples from your own experience or from your reading.

2. Americans seem to value informality and "easy" friendship. Are there disadvantages to such kinds of cultural mores? How does your own society view friendship?

3. Why do you think some people establish friendships more easily than others?

4. Discuss the quotation from George Santayana cited in the biographical sketch of Judith Viorst. Do you agree or disagree or only agree in part? Give your reasons.

5. Make a list, as Viorst does in paragraph two, of some of your favourite and least favourite things. How many of them would you share with friends or family?

6. Do you have loves and hates that you share with someone? What kind of friendship relationship do you have with that person or persons?

Proper Names

Allie （男子名）艾利

Brussels （地名）布鲁塞尔（比利时首都）

Elaine （女子名）伊莱恩（Helen的异体）

Elizabeth （女子名）伊丽莎白

Evelyn （女子名）伊夫林

Ingmar Bergman （男子名）英马尔.伯格曼（1918-，瑞典电影导演）

Joyce （女子名）乔伊斯

Meltzer （姓）梅尔策

Newark （地名）纽沃克（美国新泽西州一城市）

Suzanne （女子名）苏珊（即Susan）

Yonkers （地名）扬克斯（美国纽约州一城市）

New Words

accent

n.

1) a particular way of speaking, usually connected with a country, area, or social class 口音，腔调

e.g. He speaks English with a strong German accent.

2) emphasis given to a syllable or word by means of stress or pitch 重音

e.g. In the word "today" the accent is on the second syllable.

ardor

n. strong excitement or eagerness 热情，激情

artichoke

n. a plant whose leafy flower is eaten as a vegetable 洋蓟

convenience n.

1) the quality of being convenient; suitableness for a particular purpose, situation, etc. 方便，合宜

e.g. In many shops, shopping bags are provided for the customers' convenience.

2) an apparatus, service, etc., which gives comfort or advantage to its user 便利设施，方便的用具

e.g. The house has all the latest conveniences.

couch

n. sofa; a bed 长沙发；卧榻

cross-generational

adj. of different age brackets 两代人的，跨代的

crossroads *

n. a place where two or more roads cross 十字路口，汇集地

dormant

adj. inactive, especially not actually growing or producing typical effects 停止活动的，休眠的

forge

v.

1) develop a strong relationship 使形成，与......建立密切联系

e.g. The accident forged a link between the two families.

2) make an illegal copy of something in order to deceive 伪造，假冒

e.g. He got the money dishonestly, by forging his brother's signature on a check.

girlhood *

n. the state or time of being a girl 少女时期

jointly *

adv. the state of being shared, held or made by two or more people together 共同地

e.g. Nelson Mandela and President De Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993. motherhood *

n. the state of being a mother 母亲身份

overweight *

adj. heavier than is usual or allowed 超重的

e.g. Your suitcase is five kilograms overweight.

pregnancy *

n. carrying of a baby in the womb 怀孕

sprout

n. new shoot or bud of a plant 苗；芽

e.g. bean sprouts 豆芽

yoga

n. a system of exercises for attaining bodily or mental control and well-being 瑜伽修行法

youthful *

adj. having qualities typical of youth 年轻的

Phrases and Expressions

all the way

completely 完完全全地

e.g. I agree with you all the way, but I still don't think you will change anything by complaining. worry sick/to death

feel great worry or anxiety 引起（某人）极大的忧虑

e.g. Where on earth have you been? I was worried sick!