Querido Amigo

On the friendships men can't name.

A Translated Life is a weekly space for stories about life abroad, parenting and belonging for those living between languages.

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Dear friend,

You are hard to find, even harder from abroad.
Past 30 and staring down 40, you become harder to keep.
But oh, friend, what if the problem is that we're both men?
Insecure, fragile, clumsy, proud men.

A few weeks ago I was reading Rituales para la Amistad, a little book (it truly is, fits in a Levi's back pocket) written by three Mexican writers my age: Jazmín Barrera, Elvira Liceaga and Daniela Rea.
In it, they dissect friendship by writing letters to each other. They call out when they’ve been envious, possessive or imperfect. They trace their friendships from childhood (where we had more friends than we could count) to their late thirties, when friends quietly start disappearing from our lives.
And in that openness, they build an ode to friendship, an invitation to each other: Let's see each other more. Let's support each other. Let's make a ritual of what connects us.

I read it and thought: I have that too.
At half past seven, over a glass of wine, with a man who doesn't know I consider him my friend.

My friend Jasper doesn’t know I call him that. He probably thinks of me as that chatty Spanish expat. And I doubt his wife or any of his friends have ever heard my name. But when he told me last week he was leaving the wine shop, I walked back home sad. I opened the bottle he’d recommended that evening, poured a glass and sat thinking about that friendship I had never named until then.

Jasper ran the wine shop around the corner. It was classic and a bit old-fashioned; full of dark wood and secret passageways where rare spirits and obscenely priced bottles hide from ordinary mortals. At the back, a tasting room; and just behind it, one of those secret gardens that only exist in Amsterdam (the kind you’d never guess from the entrance).

Every time I go down to the supermarket at half past seven, Cleo texts me within twenty minutes: With Jasper, right? Enjoy it. Or come back, Theo’s acting wild. Or Let me guess: Jasper :P

By that time the shop is about to close. We drink a glass together, tell each other how the week is going. He misses his wife and his three-year-old daughter by then, killing time before heading back to them. I don’t know if Jasper is the friend I chose, but he was the friend I needed. He told me about nurseries and schools, about the best seats on ten-hour flights with babies, about white Burgundy wines and where to buy bicycles that grow as your child does.

I don’t know if he is lonely, or if he just feels that way in the shop right before closing; a bit tired, melancholic maybe. What I know is I wouldn’t have started spending so much time with him if I didn’t feel lonely myself, becoming a father here in Amsterdam, miles away from all that unconditional Spanish love.

If you walked past Overtoom and pressed your hands against the glass, peering through the bottles on the front shelves, you'd probably see two men sitting at a dim, slightly decadent tasting table. Empty shop, low light, talking tired about how hard everything is: money and the lack of it, sleep and the lack of it, the unbearable weight of responsibility. How heavy does yours feel this week? Mine is killing my back.

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Jazmín, Elvira y Daniela se escriben cartas y se llaman amigas sin reparo. Se abrazan entre párrafos, prometen verse más. Jasper y yo no sabríamos hacer nada de eso. Somos dos torpes que no saben sentarse uno al lado del otro. Pero hablamos de guarderías y de vinos, y quiero creer que eso es algo, que para mí es mucho.

Me dice que la tienda en la que va a trabajar es mucho mejor. Que solo está a unos veinte minutos en bici y que tengo que ir a verle; que le encantaría enseñarme los vinos que tienen allí y que le ayude con ideas para mejorar la tienda. Le respondo que allí nos veremos, el brillo en sus ojos no me da otra opción.

Sé que iré a verle. Y que tomaré un desvío cada vez que pase por allí con la bici. Pero también sé que nuestras tardes juntos no volverán. Que esa tienda con fachada color burdeos, esa mesa de catas vacía, ese jardín secreto donde el tiempo parecía pararse, ya no serán nuestro lugar. Que los rituales se pierden con las mudanzas.

Me engaño haciendo recuentos: conozco otros padres, vecinos, amigos. Me digo que tengo una familia preciosa. Que no estoy tan solo.
Pero sé lo que toca hacer. Despedirme de esos días en que aprendimos a compartir nuestras soledades. De los meses en los que fuimos capaces de juntarlas; con ese ritual en el que la amistad sincera entre dos hombres era real durante un instante.

Querido amigo, cuesta mucho encontrarte.
Mantenerte, cuidarte.
Imagina entonces cuánto cuesta decirte adiós.

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