C.S. Lewis wrote that friendship is born at that moment when one man or woman says to another: “What! You too? I thought no one but myself…” I think that is so.  Friendship requires, I think, the ability to give love and receive it, a willingness to be vulnerable, to share one’s soul with another. Somewhere, there needs to be a connection of the soul.

In my life I have had a number of challenges, none more enduring and difficult than love, friendship and money. I first felt the power of love when I saw my daughter Emma being born, I think, and then, once again when I got to know Maria and we fell in love in the most powerful and enduring way, it continues every day. I do not believe I was able to love outside of those two people, a sad thing to know about myself.

I have always struggled with money, I either spent too much, made too much, gave it all away, or in my present phase, simply had none. When I was young, and for most of my life I  had no friends, or friends that came and went, or friends that disappeared when there was trouble, or friends I simply did not know how to love and understand, or who understood me.

I am the living embodiment of the therapeutic idea that when you are not available, people cannot get to you, and for so much of my  I was simply not available, not really. So in my sixth decade, I am not only discovering that not only can love come at any time, but friendship as well. I have good friends now. There is my friend Scott Carrino, a musician and the co-owner of the Round House Cafe, there is my friend Jack Macmillan, a former country transportation manager, neighbor wise in the way of life in the country, machines, gates, tools and rifles. I am good friends with Tom Wolski, a veterinarian who shares my views on animals and their nature, and who is also a gifted photographer.

A few months ago, I noticed a man- eating lunch almost every day at the Round House Cafe, he usually ate alone, but seemed to know everyone who came in. Somehow, I got the feeling he lived a creative life, and I was correct. We started joking with one another and made small talk for months, and I finally saw the foolish nature of me and and I asked him to have lunch with me, I had the C.S. Lewis moment, more than one, I kept thinking “What? You too?” We both had gotten divorced after long marriages, were trying to figure out how to be fathers to our daughters, we both worked alone and rejected the corporate path, we both had love in our lives.

Rod is a gifted carpenter, he makes wonderful cabinets and other woodwork, he works out of a barn he rebuilt and lives on the bottom floor of it in a small and simple and beautiful space he restored himself. He cautioned me that he has a compost toilet – I think he thought I would be repelled – and we immediately got into a good-natured dispute about gluten. We had Rod and his partner Stephanie over for dinner, talked easily for hours, I went to see his studio, we are going to see them this weekend.

I am different from all of these men. Tom has planned for retirement and pined for it for years, Scott has built houses, bakes and cookies, is a Tai Chi wizard and loves camping in the woods, Jack understands how the world works and I do not, Rod is a skilled artist and craftsman who finds the idea of blog disturbing, he has chosen the same kind of life I have – we are on our own, we understand where we can’t be and where we must be. But we are all similar as well.

This is the first time in my life I have had so many and such good friends and I trust them and appreciate them.  People tell me all the time they can’t find love, they can’t find friendship. I am here to testify that it comes when one is ready, when one opens to it.

To love at all is to be vulnerable, to risk great pain, to give and receive friendship is an act of love, and of vulnerability. I am still learning  how to do it, I began to think it was impossible for men, yet men make wonderful friends, I see. They do love to talk, they can be open, they come running when needed.

Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll even have a lot of money again.

Lewis wrote that friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauty of others.

I had given up on friendship, I had given up on love, and here both are, right outside my door, waiting for me to be aware enough and brave enough and open enough to let them in. It is the most wonderful thing to have the beauty of others revealed.