Stay

Yesterday was our 34th wedding anniversary, and my wife and I celebrated it the way most people do: we went to a funeral.

It was a beautiful service, though, and I was listening appreciatively to a particularly thoughtful eulogy for the deceased. Something said stirred a thought, and I leaned over to whisper it to my wife. She smiled, and nodded.

A minute later – without casting so much as a glance in my direction – she reached one hand over and straightened my tie. I hadn’t realized my tie needed straightening. Another moment, and – again, without looking – she handed me a peppermint. I hadn’t known I needed that, either.

There are, in fact, many things my wife knows that I don’t know.

But at least one thing that I do.

Many a long, long year ago, I was in China, on a summer trip to teach English-as-a-second-language classes and to be whatever friend I could to a group of young Asians who had just graduated high school, and were now bound for universities across the country.

It was my first venture outside the confines of my own country, and the ways of foreign travel were especially new to me. So, when our jetliner finally approached the airspace over Peking, and the flight attendants distributed a "customs declaration" for each passenger to fill out, I really had no idea what I was doing.

The paper asked me to report any foreign currency I was bringing into China. I scribbled a zero. I wasn’t bringing in any foreign currency – just a couple of hundred dollars in American money.

That answer seemed to satisfy the customs officers on my way in. Six weeks later, though, heading home, it proved to be a problem. The uniformed officer standing between me and the “Now Leaving China” sign wanted to know what I’d been doing way out in Xinjiang province to earn all that American cash.

I didn’t know what to say. I suddenly realized that, to this official, U.S. dollars qualified as “foreign” – and that he was more than happy to believe I was some kind of smuggler. He had a jail cell waiting, for smugglers.

The leader of our traveling group hung back for a few minutes to see what my problem was. Seeing this could be complicated, she sent the rest of our crew on down the boarding ramp to our plane. Then she tried, for a few minutes, to explain to the Chinese officer that I was an ignorant youth, not a criminal. The customs officer clearly wasn’t buying it.

The airport public address system announced final boarding for our flight. At which point, my leader, tired and frustrated, turned to me and said, “This is your problem. You’ll have to work it out.” Then she, too, walked down the ramp to the plane.

I’d never felt so alone in my life.

Through some desperate charades, I finally persuaded the Chinese gentleman to let me leave the country – if I left all my American money with him. He sternly waved me through, and I scrambled, still shaking, onto the plane. I threaded my way down the aisle, past my leader, who was leaning back in her seat, eyes closed.

Years later, I was the leader of a similar trip, this time to Brazil. At trip’s end, I found myself in an astonishingly comparable situation – one young man from our group had wandered off in the airport, just in time for the p.a. to announce boarding for our flight home. Boarding proceeded, until the only ones still left in the waiting area were me and the other older fellow in our party.

Then, came the final boarding call. The flight attendant told us it was now or never.

“He’s old enough to be responsible for himself,” my companion shrugged. “Let’s go.”

I wanted to. Oh, I wanted to. But the young man was my friend, and every time I turned toward that gangway, I remembered how it felt, standing alone at a terminal gate in China.

“Sir, we have to close the cabin door now,” the attendant said. I cast one more glance down the hall … and here he finally came, ambling along, confident as any youth that the plane would wait and we’d all wait with it. I bit my tongue, followed him on, and we headed for home.

I’m not sure why those experiences came back to me in that moment yesterday, at the funeral. Maybe it was my wife’s swift, smooth, patient gestures. Maybe it was the thought of the new widow, burying her husband, after nearly 50 years of leaning on his dependable company. “For better, or for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health.”

Those phrases take on such different meanings, for couples growing old together. The shared jokes and quotes. The stories told and re-told. The little aggravations that never go away but never quite break the thousand small ties that, over time, bind, and bind, and bind. Certain looks. Secret smiles. Moments and memories, drifting in and drifting out on the daily tides.

Since that really terrifying day at the boarding gate in China, I’ve come to measure friendship mostly by one clear quality. “Will they stay?” Will this person walk away when it gets hard, or dull, or inconvenient? When someone else is more interesting, or fun, or easy to stand by?

It’s also how I’ve come to measure my own loyalties. Is this someone I’d miss the plane for?

“Be careful,” an old friend once told me, when our friendship was new, “of people who are only as kind as they can afford to be.” Or – I know now – as faithful.

Thirty-four years has shown me what kind – and faithful – look like. A pretty blonde, smart and funny, brushing my tie into place. Slipping me a peppermint. Here beside me, all the way.