Rosemary Ahearn is my freelance editor, she edits my books and has become one of my closest and dearest friends. Once in awhile, she comes to the farm to check on me, encourage me, see Maria and the animals, sit with Flo the barn cat (Rosemary loves animals, but is a cat person.) Once in awhile, I drive down to her town downstate and have breakfast with her.

Over these last few years, she has become a central figure in my book writing life, I believe I would have given up on book writing some time ago if not for her. Like me, she left the whirlwind of New York publishing and media life to come upstate – she lives a couple of hours from us. Like me, she found someone to live and share her life with.

Like me, she had to make her own new way in the collapsing world of publishing as we both knew it. Rosemary likes writers, as editors once liked writers,  and talks to them and treats them with care and respect. That is not really in vogue anymore, writers are commodities for profit and loss like most things in America. Publishing used to be a calling, like writing, and more and more, it’s a job.

Writers need to be loved, it is often lonely and unnerving work. Rosemary loves writers. She has stayed with me and supported me during some difficult days for me, I cannot imagine writing books without her in my life. Like all good editors, she is tough and unrelenting, I never send her anything that does not come quickly back to me for more work. And it always gets better.

We had the sweetest day with Rosemary. Maria joined us for most of the day, and that would not have happened a few years ago.  We sat and talked, she visited with Fate and Red while they herded sheep, Rosemary hung out with Chloe, we sat and talked in the dining room. We went the Round House Cafe for a long and easy lunch, I bought her a Christmas gift certificate at Battenkill Books, and she used it up in a blink after lunch. It is a spiritual experience to watch Rosemary glide through a bookstore.

Then we came back to the farm and walked in the deep woods for an hour or so with the dogs. Like me, she loves the woods, their quiet and stillness and Cathedral-like feeling.

I thought this was different today, I have changed.

I am opening up to friendship. it has been a long and gradual and difficult process for me, but it is happening, and I am grateful to have a friend like Rosemary  who I love and trust so much, and who loves and trusts me. She always lifts me up when I need it, publishing can be rough on the ego. She told me at  lunch that my writing has never been more beautiful and I puffed up like a blowfish.

Friends I love and trust are coming into my life. Scott Carrino and I talk almost every day, we spend time together every week, a massive commitment of time for men. I feel close to Pamela Rickenbach of Blue Star Equiculture, she is as skittish of friendship as I am. We are used to being alone.  I have come to value and enjoy Tom Atkins, a poet, photographer, painter and blogger, a pastor and father. We meet at the Round House Cafe once a week.

It took me a long time to open up to Tom, he was patient and perceptive, it has happened.  I feel close to Joshua Rockwood, the young farmer awaiting trial on 13 charges of animal cruelty. He is much younger than me, we are different yet connected. Ken Norman, our farrier, a gruff and big hearted man, is a friend of mine. We look at the world in much the same way.

I miss my friendship with Paul Moshimer, we had so many good plans for it. Maybe they will take place in another space and time. That is the thing about trust and opening, I think, there are no guarantees in life, life is a struggle, and friendship is sometimes a struggle.

I guess friendship is loaded with me,  I am wary of taking those gates down, like so many other men.

I have also become friends with several wonderful women, members of the Creative Group At Bedlam Farm, an artist or two who live in my town. We support and affirm one another, mostly through e-mails and texts, sometimes we get to see and talk with one another. These friendships are deepening, they are becoming real, they enrich my life and help me to feel and be grounded. It is wondrous to be understood and accepted. To be liked and loved.

I think trust is the cornerstone of friendship, I have often been disappointed by friends, and I am sure I have often disappointed my friends. I am mindful of trusting, in order to be trusted.

A day like today with Rosemary would not have been possible just a few years ago, I would never have opened myself up to it or allowed it.

I believe the process began for me with my closest friend ever, Maria. She has opened me up, not so much by what she says to me, but by who she is and how we feel for one another. She was nearly as closed up as I was, and we are opening up together. It feels like a miracle.

This day was special, I told Maria. It has been so rare in my life, it is becoming more common. Opening up is a profound spiritual experience, I have a good long ways to go.  I am different than her, I need time and space alone, there is still a moat around me in my head.

But if I have a friendship as deep and rich as my friendship with Rosemary, then I know I am making progress, moving in the right direction, I know my hard work is paying off.