Anything beautiful in my yard grows despite my intervention, and it always takes me by surprise no matter how often it happens. Every now and then I go out and dig around and wring my hands and throw fertilizer around, but I don’t fool myself that this is gardening. This morning when I left for work, the azaleas had flowered out overnight, and as I passed, they tugged on my sleeve to get their picture taken in their moment of glory. I was breathless and sad at the same time because their beauty is so intense and so transient, just like you and me and all those who make us catch our breath in awe and love and the unspoken knowledge of impending loss.

Last weekend, a friend invited me for a belated birthday dinner and gave me a belated present–my very own life jacket! She was trying to help me get over my last traumatic kayak outing in which I tipped over, went under and struggled to get to shore, kayak in tow, in a life jacket that came up over my head and obscured my vision like an XL shell on an XS turtle. As a nonswimmer, it was right up there on the horror scale with The Perfect Storm. So now I have my own life jacket, and I might actually get back on the water again. But the real lifesaver for me has been friendship itself — a life preserver that has kept me afloat in the stormy times of my life and helped me tread water when I was becalmed, dull, confused or stuck in place. The friend who was thoughtful enough to help me get over my fear of water, the friend I meet for mutual creative inspiration every Tuesday night, the old friend who shares her life with me in long-distance calls, the friend who is my right hand man, my bookclub friends, my walking friend, my soul-sister friend, the friend who knows all my secrets, the friends at work who have become family, my blogger friends, the high school friends who pop up in my life when I least expect it, the friends who cycle in and out of my life and always leave me richer … my lifejacket friends.

I have a hard time asking for help, because I don’t want to be a bother or cause an inconvenience. I’d rather do things for myself so that I don’t owe anyone or I’m not obligated. I don’t think I became independent by choice. First my dad skipped out on my brothers and me, and then my mother checked out, making sure we had everything we needed to survive except for compliments, physical affection or laughs. Soon after, I found a boyfriend who was like my parents in the sense that I was just an extra in his drama. Add to that his penchant for beating me like a drum, and I stopped expecting much. Hoping, always hoping, but too proud and at the same time, too unworthy, to ask for help or favors unless I scrupulously paid them back. This week I’ve been sick with some sort of trash flu. Along with praying that I would someday be able to breathe through both nostrils again, I obsessed about tall glasses of cold fresh-squeezed orange juice. When I was blowing my nose or using the neti pot, I had visions of that OJ in a tall skinny glass etched with leaves that I use for Champagne. It symbolized wellness, sunlight, health, Vitamin C and Vitamin Hope. So I had to ask a friend to go to the grocery for me. An ordinary favor, not out of her way, and yet how embarrassed I was to need help. Today I ran out of soup and had to turn to another friend. Why was it so hard to ask for help from my loyal, tenderhearted friends? I could ask my therapist about this, but it seems pretty simple: In the process of being frozen out by my family, I gradually froze over. Old habits that once protected us can end up turning into strait jackets. I don’t want that to happen to me, but I know it’s easier to recognize patterns than it is to break them. I’m going to make a start by simply being grateful when my friend drops off the soup, instead of trying to figure out the cost of a can of soup with tax added in and apologizing over and over for putting him to all this trouble. I’ll put my palms together, bow and say thank you. For teaching me to receive.