Friend #45 - Violette
My wedding date
Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we have movie-like experiences with people who are perfectly placed together at the right time and at the right place. Last weekend, I attended my childhood friend, Cynthia’s wedding in Banff. She married her long-time lover Christopher at a beautiful ceremony that overlooked mountains.
In January, Cynthia suggested that Violette, a fellow wedding guest, and I connect to split the cost of a pricy hotel room. And we did just that but also planned a four-day trip to the area that would allow us to explore hot spots like Lake Louise and Jasper.
Violette and I met for the first time in person at the Calgary airport. We immediately hit it off and began chatting about all there is to talk about with a new friend on our drive to Banff. Our car, a Jeep Wrangler which we nicknamed Lucy, was a last-minute upgrade from our prebooked Nissan Rogue.
The first stop was for a quick bite at an Aboriginal town and the next morning we woke up early to hike the Lake Agnes trail which ended at a tiny tea house that serves scones, sandwiches, and a variety of hot teas.
Violette was born in Dubai. She immigrated to Canada when she was 15 with her parents. Her mom is originally from Ukraine and her father is from Lebanon but they met during a business trip.
“When I moved to Canada from Dubai, I assumed that the people in my class would be my friends,” Violette says. “But they would speak to me in class and then pretend like they don’t know me in the halls.”
“In Dubai, it was very normal to go to someone’s house after school and gather around sweets. Multi-generational friendship is also common,” she says.
The two of us have a knack for imitating accents and bond over our time on exchange in Europe. Mine in Eastern France and Violette’s in Germany.
Then it was time for the main event. Our wedding table could have been placed in a sitcom. A table of leftovers, we shared jokes, shots, and stories about the couple.
“Everyone share your greatest insecurity,” I asked a table of five of us and around it went.
“I think mine is that I can easily share things but it doesn’t come from a place of vulnerability and that’s why I think it’s hard for me to find love,” I admit.
“It’s more relatability than vulnerability,” Violette adds.
As someone who values humor, I must make the distinction between vulnerability and oversharing. A comedy performance is not vulnerable. We may expose the most vulnerable parts of ourselves through comedy but an audience doesn’t cry with you.
The same is true with oversharing with a group of people. I’ve often been the person who joked about my singledom to a group of strangers later to think that those people only know me by one story and may then assume my entire character.
But with a friend, old or new, there is a feeling of safety. A feeling that assures us that if we reveal insecurity the friendship is still safe. And I felt like I found that in Violette.
“A friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face.”
— Maya Angelou
Internet Browsing
Loved your article, the pics, and the two links at the end... I'm just switching teams at work for this lack of bonding in the hope that there will be some in the new team...