The World Travelers

We have these awesome friends. I’m going to call them Mr and Mrs World Traveler. (Mr T and Mrs T, for short.) Mr T and ML were in a fraternity together in college. 

They both drank like fish and and smoked so much 4.2.0. its surprising that they have functioning livers or lungs left. This fraternity was like animal house. A very diverse and random assortment of guys who, against all odds, have turned out to be some of the most successful people we know. Many of our closest friends are rooted in the relationships that ML formed through that fraternity. In fact, I met ML in that dirty house one night, but that too is a story for another post. 

So Mr. T and ML became good friends in college. Mr. T was ML’s best man at our wedding, and ML was Mr. T’s best man at his. I guess you could say that ML and Mr. T are like besties. When our world started to fall apart last year, (after the azoos diagnosis, work slowing down substantially for ML, and our dog died) I started feeling like ML must need a friend. I have a pretty solid support network with my bestie, my sister and my mom, but he really didn’t have anyone, and I worried about that. So I called Mr.T and without going into any details asked if he could reach out to ML. 

I think that Mr. and Mrs. T had some inclination that something was going on with us. We’d stayed at their house a few times when we had to travel to the City for early appointments. They knew that we were seeing doctors, and were stressed out about some stuff, but we’d sent some pretty strong signals that indicated we didn’t want to talk about it. 

I am friends with Mrs. T, but we are not super close. I love her and love hanging out with her, but we don’t actually have that much in common and probably wouldn’t make the effort if it weren’t for Mr T and ML. We’d always talked about starting our families sometime in 2009, and used to gossip about who was or wasn’t drinking at parties. She is super career oriented and travels a lot for her job. She’s always worried about how maternity leave will affect her career ladder. Earlier this year, on a ski trip, on a ski lift, she asked about our “plans”. Without saying much I just told her that we’d encountered some serious challenges and that it wasn’t going to happen without some serious assistance. And then last time we visited, maybe a few months ago, I must have been in a really good place because we talked about it a little more. I didn’t divulge many details, but was able to tell her how hard it has been and how hard the road ahead of us will be. She was really kind and empathetic, of course.

Every so often I ask ML if he has shared our situation with any of his friends, and he always says no. Until this weekend. 

We were festival camping with a big group of friends, including Mr. T.   I saw them sitting together and decided against joining them. ML later told me that he’d spilled his guts and told Mr. T everything. He said that it felt good to get it all off his chest. I feel so relieved. It feels so much better to know that ML has a friend who he can share this all with. A friend who knows the depths of what we are dealing with.