The Toms

May 7, 2018

Greetings from among them,

Here’s a truth;  As you get older, making friends is like making a jump shot in basketball.  Seems like it’s pretty natural all your life and then one day someone throws you the ball and you miss the rim by five feet.

Which makes me realize how fortunate I am.  My life is bookmarked with a plethora of people who I call friends.  I am pretty liberal with the definition and so ‘friends’ has become quite a spectrum.  I have friends who I know would help me move or would take me to the airport.  I have friends who have never been to my house.  I have friends who I have not met face to face.  I have ‘coffee twice a year’ friends, and work-friends and running friends.

And there are Tom friends.

This is not the only standard by which I measure friendship, but this week, not for the first time, I found myself smiling at how lucky I am to have Toms in my life.

I grew up with Tom Wolfe and he is my friend.  I met Tom Skaff in my twenties, and he is my friend; I grew up with him too but in a little different way.  For most of my life I have had these two people to turn to, and I have been better for it.

Both Toms live about 500 miles from me.  I don’t see them as often as I like.  Every time we say good bye I know it will be months, maybe a year, before I see them again.  But I also know that our conversation will pick up as if no time had intervened.  If you smile at this, you likely have a Tom friend in your life.

Tom Skaff turned 70 just over a week ago.  Tom Wolfe will turn 60 in a few days.  I mention it because I want you to celebrate too.

These two are very different but have so many things in common, besides me, that it cannot be a coincidence.  I don’t know if it is a blueprint of anything, I only am here to testify.

We have bicycles in our history.  We have hundreds and thousands of miles of riding a few feet apart in that exceptional intimacy that exists in that space.  Early mornings, two lane roads, splitting the fog on our way for a twenty mile into the countryside or an adventure to Maine and back. 

They are both men of faith, which has challenged me and encouraged me.  They both live their faiths as much as talk about it, which is as authentic as it comes.  My friends are both intelligent, deep thinkers.  That said, they have both told me at different times to stop over thinking and will from time to time point out my navel-gazing tendencies. 

I can’t tell you how many times I have laughed with the Toms, laughed so hard I could not catch my breath and my eyes were watering.  I have spit water out to laugh.  I have laughed in church, in movies, in meetings, at funerals and it was always their fault because I turned and saw them laughing first.

They have seen me cry.  They have held my shoulder and waited with me for grief or heartbreak to pass.  They have also been the friend who has said it was time to get over it and move on.

In that vein, they have both at different times shook their heads at me when I was angry over something that would not matter in a week or a month.  Their perspective has saved me, even when they were not in the room.

They are remarkable fathers.  Paired with this is their patience, which I have tried to emulate with varying degrees of success.  But like most passionate people, even their patience has limits.  It is rare and memorable thing when you reach that limit with either of them.

Anyone who knows my two friends will use the word ‘kind’ when describing them.  It is in their approach to their relationships, to how they work, and in how they raised their children.  I don’t know that it is intentional, this graceful way they interact with others, but it is also an expression of their beliefs.

Both men have faced life threatening health challenges.  They have dealt with tragedies.  They have had disappointments and setbacks.  Watching how they dealt with those things has given me the strength to approach difficulties in my own life.

Tom Wolfe and Tom Skaff have lived balanced lives.  They have worked hard but kept their families and friends always as first priority, both have a way of considering people first in their choices.

When Tom Wolfe began playing guitar we were teenagers.  He said then that it might take him five years to become good, which to me seemed impossibly long.  Tom is still practicing.  This patience and appreciation of simple and enduring beauty is what makes him a good woodworker too.  I’m not sure he would say it this way, but at the heart of this is a humbleness.  He is willing to set aside his ego to learn and fail and break a string and miscut a board and then take a breath and begin again.

Tom Skaff has a servant’s heart.  His compassion for others, including me, in spite of how I must test him, is a testimony of who he is.  He does not have to win every conversation or decision, because he has learned humility as an expression. He has strong beliefs and opinions, and will defend them, but in all of that he makes room for the ideas of others.  When he left to become a missionary in India I was in awe of the choice, but in time came to understand how it is possible. 

When I called Tom last year to ask him for advice for my son Carson, who is a missionary in Columbia, he said; ‘Be humble. Trust God.’

Patience. Kindness. Loyalty. Humility. Compassion. Sense of humor. Curiosity. Determination. A willingness to change, to adapt.  And somehow through decades of every manner of experience, still close friends with me.  This is some of what the Toms have in common.

I am still making friends, some of which are destined to be lifelong connections, maybe as deep as any.  I will admit it’s not as simple as it was when I was running the streets in fourth grade, looking for a game to play or someone to explore the with.  But it happens, usually when I am not trying. 

I don’t compare my Tom friendships with other friends I make.  I will say that I do hold up a mirror and look for the Tom in me.  And I keep practicing.

“From quiet homes and first beginning,

out to the undiscovered ends,

there's nothing worth the wear of winning,

but laughter and the love of friends.”

Hilaire Belloc

Hope this finds you a friend,

David

Copyright © 2018 David Smith