Kindred, Again

I have written before about the concept of kindred spirits, which I learned about from the Anne of Green Gables books, although I don't know if L.M. Montgomery should get credit for coining the phrase. I love the idea of kindred spirits, but even more, I love when I encounter them, and when they become a part of my life. One of the best aspects of kindred spirithood is its unpredictability, the fact that a kindred spirit may be older or younger than you, from a different background, of a different race, religion or gender--kindred spirits can be found anywhere at all if you remain open to the possibility that you might actually find one.

I have a friend I've known since we were eleven. I love my friend, and there is much I could write about her, but my focus here is on her dad. I don't remember the first time I met my friend's dad, but I do know, that even as an eleven-year-old, I found him to be excellent company. He is, was, older than all of my other friends' dads. He was married before he married my friend's mother, and he is only a few years younger than my grandmother, but until I was an adult, I never thought about this. I'm not sure I even realized it back then. I did know that he was funny, and that frequently, the same things made us laugh. 

I never spent that much time with my friend's father; like all parents, he existed in the backdrop of our lives. But once, when I was in my twenties, I was in a home goods store and found myself waiting in a line by a display of cocktail napkins with cartoons and jokes printed on them, the kind of thing I would never in a million years buy. But the line wasn't moving, and I started scanning the rows of napkins, and I stopped on one package featuring napkins imprinted with the line: Who invited you?

Without thinking, I took the packet off the shelf and bought it. Not for me, but for my friend's father, whom I knew would find it funny in precisely the way I did. I mailed it to him. I can't think of another time I have purchased a novelty gift for anyone, let alone a friend's father, and sent it to them for the pleasure in knowing it would elicit a smile. 

My friend's father is even older now, as, I suppose, am I. Over the years we have occasionally sent each other trivial little gifts of this sort, always targeted toward the other's sense of humor. This is never planned, and never discussed. It just is. I will miss it when it ends. 

I see my friend's father every once in a while, and I always feel a sense of relief when I walk into a room and he is in it. There he is, I think, and smile.