Whenever I sit on our sofa, I always lift the bottom cushions and check under them before sitting down. It’s become a habit, but tonight I caught myself doing it and wondered why I did it. Then I remembered.

I have a friend who is very smart and very introspective. Sometimes she’s so deep in her thoughts that you have to nudge her back to the conversation you’re having with her. She is also very calm amidst chaos. And that was a conscious choice she made.

She has experienced two life events that would send most of us into a tailspin, but she told me that she refused to allow them to interrupt her life. She said that she was available to support the people who were in trouble and she would continue to help them when they came out on the other side of their problems, but she would not obsess about their situations or let them interfere with her life.

She also doesn’t let the little annoyances, or alarming discoveries, in life get to her.

One day, she told me of a visit to her mother’s house. She said that she was sitting on the couch across from her mother, who was in an armchair. While talking, she slid her hand down the side of the couch between the cushion and the the arm. She felt something soft, so she lifted the cushion and found a family of mice. The surprising thing is that she found this to be interesting instead of horrifying. She told the story in a bemused fashion, as if it were odd that she didn’t find animals in her own furniture.

On another occasion, she told me that her son’s grade-school teacher sent a note home saying that she suspected that her son had worms. She called the teacher and asked why she thought this and the teacher said that the boy couldn’t sit still and was acting oddly. So, my friend took her son to his pediatrician and had him checked. He didn’t have worms after all, so he was sent back to school with a declaration of wormlessness from the doctor. Again, my friend didn’t get upset or mortified like most of us would have. She just did what she had to do, and told the story.

Years later, her younger son had the same teacher. He came home from school one day and said that the box of raisins that she had sent to school with him for recess had had worms in it. He took the box to the teacher and told her that he had inchworms that he wanted to show the class, since they sang the song “Inchworm.” The teacher told him that the the worms in his raisins weren’t inchworms and he should throw the raisins out. Being a very considerate teacher, she offered him an alternate snack from her supply closet.

I remember that my friend grimaced when she wondered if this teacher now thought of her family every time she saw worms. But then she laughed at the coincidence and put the incident aside.

I find her company to be very soothing. Nothing is a disaster to her, just something to endure and examine later. She might be on to something.

Pretend this apple is a raisin.