“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” ― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.” ― Muhammad Ali
This is the first in a series of reflections on friendship that I shared with my men’s group known as “Brothers on a Journey” that meets at All Saints Episcopal Church every Monday night. You can read the others at:
The theme of my men's group is "friendship" and it has proven to be a rich topic for us to explore during our sharing time. It has led me to think about how my
understanding and practice of friendship has evolved over the course of my
life. I have come to see friendship as an art, like the art of listening, that needs
to be cultivated for it to reach its fullest and best expression. I also see
friendship as a journey—an opportunity to explore and develop one’s own
identity and life purpose through interaction with others.
I have divided my friendships into three phases, each of which had a somewhat different basis. This is just a rough scheme, of course: friendships are much more complex, as my narrative will show.
1) Childhood and adolescent friendships are generally based on shared interests and emotional bonds, and are often partly determined by geography.
2) College and professional friendships are based on shared goals and aspirations, and are usually determined by professional choices.
3) Spiritual friendships are based on a sense of something greater than oneself bringing us together for a purpose greater than either of us can understand. These friendships tend to be lifelong.
My childhood friends were determined in part by
geography. I grew up in Princeton, NJ, a town noted for its prestigious Ivy
League college, but my background was working class and immigrant. I grew up on
Pine St, a narrow alley-like street located near gas stations and diners, where
mostly Italians and other immigrants lived. For the first few years of my life,
my parents rented an apartment owned by an elderly Greek couple named the
Gregories. My best childhood friend was Jack Robertiello, an Italian kid a year
or two younger than me. I used to go to
his next door apartment for a glass of water because his mother’s water tasted
better than mine. That’s because Jack’s mother gave me cool water from a pitcher
in the refrigerator and my mother gave me yucky tepid tap water. When Jack’s
mother poured her cool, refrigerated water for Jack and me, she had to be
careful that she gave us each exactly the same amount. If one of us got a drop
more water than the other, we’d start complaining. Loudly.
Jack and I remained friends until my mid
twenties—he was even the best man at my first marriage—but there was always a
bit of rivalry between us. He went to Catholic school, became an athlete, and
was a voracious reader and keenly critical connoisseur of music, comic books,
food, you name it. I have to confess that Jack was much cleverer and cooler
than me. He was also a rebel like me and this made his life complicated and
interesting. He got a football scholarship to a Catholic college but had to
drop out after a year because he spent most of his time partying rather than
studying. He moved to Alaska to be with a girlfriend who was a dancer, and then
returned to Princeton and became a bar tender and a waiter. He eventually married a New York Times
photographer and found his calling as a New York food critic.
Our friendship waned in part because Jack was
very allergic to religion. He was best
man at my wedding but we drifted apart after my marriage to a Presbyterian
minister’s daughter. I don’t think Jack approved of my becoming conventional
and going to church and grad school. I haven’t seen him in 40 years but I still
harbor the somewhat illusive hope that one of these days, we might get together
for a meal, at an Italian restaurant of course.
My friends during my elementary school days
were kids on my block, most of whom were not as interesting as Jack. They came
from working class families like mine and displayed very little intellectual
curiosity. I was different. I was precocious. I loved to read and to write and
this got me the attention of teachers who were looking for bright students. In
junior high, I was placed in honors classes and had the chance to become
friends with the elite of Princeton, kids whose parents were academics and
professional and in some cases, Nobel Prize winners. This was an incredible new
world for me since my parents hadn’t completed high school. My father worked as
a janitor at Princeton and my mother worked as a waitress and a seamstress. They were both avid readers and quite
intelligent but they were not educated and lacked the sophistication associated
with Princeton. We lived in a modest home and didn’t own a car. I became keenly
aware of class differences at an early age. A townie with academic potential, I
didn’t fit into any mold.
In junior high I became friends with what we
now call “nerds.” Interesting odd balls who loved books and were not very good
at sports. One of the most memorable of my junior high friends was Dennis
Nurkse, an eccentric kid who came to Princeton from Britain. His father was an
economist from Estonia. Nurkse (that’s what we always called him, never Dennis)
wrote off beat poetry and cultivated quirks like drinking Lime Juice. (I think
that’s because he had British accent and identified with being a Limey.) Nurkse
and I went on long walks around Carnegie Lake, talking endlessly about books
and poetry just like the Romantic poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. Nurkse eventually
went on to become the poet laureate of Brooklyn, a title I envy. Let me say it
once again: Poet laureate of Brooklyn!
How cool is that! I haven’t seen Nurkse since high school, but I will never
forget him. Incidentally, his brother Peter became a Quaker and lives in
Northern California. Nurkse was the kind of person you’d find only in places
like Princeton, and Brooklyn.
I was a rebel at an early age and that affected
my friendships. After reading H.G. Wells and the Communist Manifesto, I became
a socialist and rejected religion in the seventh grade. Church seemed boring and the history of holy
wars and witch hunts and pogroms appalled me. I was devouring books by authors like T.S.
Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Franz Kafka and immersed myself in the world of ideas,
which seemed far more interesting than the Episcopal Church my mother dragged
me to, with its smells and bells and mind-numbing sermons.
Given my rejection of Christianity during
adolescence, it’s not surprising that some of my best friends were secular Jews.
Sam Goldberger was the son of a theoretical physicist who worked on the
Manhattan Project and became President of Cal Tech. I used to hang out at his
home on the other side of Nassau Street where the professors lived, many of
them in Tutor style homes. Sam’s parents lived in an A Frame that stood out
just like his Jewish identity. The
Goldbergers were part of an influx of Jewish intellectuals who came to
Princeton in the wake of Albert Einstein.
Sam and I studied Latin together in junior high
school and received special tutoring from our antiquated Latin teacher, a
chinless woman with pleated skirts named Mrs. Richards. She took time to teach
us because she saw our aptitude and hoped we’d become classicists, but behind
her back, with the cruelty of adolescence, we loved to mock her. As we completed
four years of high school Latin in two years and learned to read Cicero’s “On
Friendship” in the original Latin, Sam and I became close friends, though there
was also some rivalry between us. His parents had extraordinarily high
expectations for their son. His mother was initially worried when her son had
befriended a boy whose parents never went to college, so she somehow managed to
find out my IQ. When she discovered it was higher than her son’s, I got the
royal treatment at her home. Sam was not terribly pleased by her behavior, but
we learned to laugh at her (as teenagers tend to do) and remained friends
because we both were insatiably curious about books and ideas and we loved to
walk and talk together.
Sam went on to get a doctorate in psychology at Stony
Brook University and then became a Sufi sheik, much to the disappointment and
dismay of his parents, especially his mother. His mother told me that she
wanted him to major in “real science” so he could receive a Nobel Prize. Having
a son who led dances of universal peace was not her idea of success. Sam and I stayed connected for a while we were
in our twenties because of our mutual interest in religion but we drifted apart
when he moved to California. The last time I saw him when in 1990 when his
father became president of Cal Tech and I was invited to visit him and his
parents here in Pasadena. At that time, I had a PhD, so my wife and I were warmly
welcomed in the home of this illustrious physicist. Sam lived in the Bay area
and we talked about getting together but it never happened. I’d love to see Sam
again, but he has disappeared from my radar screen. It would be interesting to
connect with him again.
My other best friend was also Jewish but from a
very different background. Peter Mark was a Hungarian Jew whose parents both
were in German concentration camps. They lost their spouses during the
Holocaust and suffered from what we now call PTSD. This had a huge influence on
Peter. He was brilliant and funny in his odd Jewish way, but he was also very
broken. He reminded me of Franz Kafka and Lenny Bruce. Kafka said, “There is
hope but not for us.” Peter used to say: “Things always get darkest just before
they turn completely black.” My mother loved Peter because of his sensitive
soul, his sense of humor, and his good heart. (She didn’t like Sam because she
saw him as a snob and my mother hated snobs.)
Peter’s family life was very complicated,
especially after his mother died. Peter was
exasperated by his father who was an excellent photographer but a lousy
businessman. Peter ended up dropping out of college to help his father manage a
failing liquor store in Trenton, NJ. Peter and his father ended up moving to
Pittsburgh, where Peter had briefly attended college. The last time I saw Peter
he was eking out a precarious living painting Victorian houses in Pittsburgh.
Like his Dad, Peter was a lousy businessman, but good-hearted.
Three years after graduating from college, I
wanted to earn some money to go to Greece and visit the island where my father
was born. This was a way for me to honor my Dad who died in 1971, just before I
graduated. Peter and I decided to go into the painting business together. I saw
it as a quick way to earn money, but our efforts didn’t pan out. Maybe it was
the ironic name Peter chose for our painting company, “The Soft Underbelly of
Europe” (a reference to what Churchill called Southern Europe) or maybe it was our
slogan, “Good as any any, better than some.” But the main reason we made no
money is that Peter smoked way too much pot, and was terrible at estimating
jobs. After two months, we parted ways no richer than when we started. I started
my own painting venture and in six weeks, I earned enough money painting houses
to finance my trip to Greece.
I owe a great debt to Peter, however. He helped
me to understand a little more clearly what it’s like to be a child of a
Holocaust survivor. He helped me to see the world through a Jewish perspective.
And he had a great sense of humor. When I wrote my novel Relics of America, I include a story about a Jewish photographer
loosely based on episodes from the life of Peter’s father. I hope someday Peter
and I will cross paths. I still have a very warm spot in my heart for him.
In my next posting, I will explore the friendships that developed while I was in college and grad school--my professional friendships.
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