Fragile relations
I saw the two of them up ahead and promptly ducked into the next lane to detour far and wide around them. So it goes with people sometimes, don’t you find? They were perfect at one time in your life and then, at some other time, they no longer are. For whatever reason — sometimes we know full well why, sometimes it’s a mystery to us. If we’re lucky, over the course of our life we collect a core of ‘chosen family’ friends around us, who remain with us as cheerleaders and challengers through thick and thin, good and bad, easy and tough times. If, along the way, we lose a few, due to the quirks of personality or warts of hurtful shortcomings (on one or both sides), then I think that makes us normal fallible humans. Certainly I am that. I am still learning the complicated lesson of accepting no more than my share of the blame, of letting go (with both hands) when there is clearly no appetite for rapprochement, and of having the generosity of spirit to meet head-on those wi...