2017-09-28
19 分钟Modern.
The podcast is supported by from the New York Times and WBUR Boston.
This is modern love stories of love, loss, and redemption.
I'm your host, Meghna Chakrabarti.
When Victor Lodotto moved to Ashland, Oregon, he expected to spend his days writing alone in his sublet apartment.
But when he met his new neighbor, he was drawn into a friendship that was as deep and abiding as a love story.
Actor Ollie Fuzzle reads for us this week.
He stars in the new movie Victoria and Abdul, and he reads Victor Lodato's essay when your greatest romance is a friendship.
Is this your grandson?
People sometimes ask Austen when she's out with me.
I love watching her vanity prick up, the way she tilts her small white head and brings out her southern accent to correct them.
No, honey, he's my friend.
At this point, folks usually smile tightly and turn away, perhaps worried there's more than friendship going on between the old lady and the younger man seated at the bar or strolling through the supermarket giggling like teenagers.
Why we're giggling I couldn't tell you.
Often our mirth seems fueled by some deep delight at being together.
Friendship, like its flashier cousin love, can be wildly chemical and, like love, can happen in an instant.
When I met Austin, I was not looking for a friend.
I had come alone to this small town to finish a book.
So when a bony, blue eyed stranger knocked on my door, introducing herself as the lady from across the way and wondering if I might like to come over and see her garden, maybe have a gin and tonic, I politely declined.
Watching her walk away, though, in her velvet slip ons and wrinkled blouse I felt a strange pang, a slow pin of sadness that I suppose could best be described as loneliness.