Last summer, I was chatting with my friends Kay and Bruce about how friendships happen, long-lasting ones, that is. Bruce is a clinical psychologist, and he says it’s chemistry; neurochemistry, that is. Or as he put it, it’s “like birds of a feather flock together.” I thought about this today when I looked over at the next-door neighbors’ bird feeder. Tiny little birds, maybe two or three species among them, are flitting around the bird feeder.
Then, while I was watching the bird feeder, the Medivac helicopter landed on the roof of the hospital, which is just a couple of hundred feet from where I live. In fact, the landing pad is just a tad above the level of my apartment porch, so I have a bird’s eye view of what’s happening.
A friend who used to work at the hospital explained how this medical transport works. The helicopter comes in, medical personnel get off to prepare the patient for the flight to Anchorage, then the flight crew takes the plane to be refueled, I guess somewhere near the airport. When the chopper comes back, the medical personnel put the patient into the plane, board themselves, and then they’re off to Anchorage. Today I watched long enough to see the flight crew walking around the helicopter after they came back from refueling. They seemed to be checking on something near the tail.
Somehow these particular people were attracted to this risky, challenging job, and whatever brought them together also enables them to work together and save lives. I think that’s chemistry, too, and it’s not reserved for romantic relationships. It’s not the same kind of fiery combustion that gets people immediately excited about being with another person. That flames out anyway, eventually. What I’m talking about is a stable compound that stays warm without burning up.
Copyright 2013-2014 Genie Hambrick
The Cheechako Diaries 
My oldest friend (Phil) didn’t like metaphors , it was because he was slow in catching on to new linguist ideas and long division, when we were in the 4th grade, we studied the metaphor “Birds of feather flock together”, but Phil thought there was a misprint that needed straightening out …and when the teacher asked him to recite the metaphor and tell what its line means Phil said, ”feathers of a bird flop together”… and it means ”don’t leave your birds outside when its raining”…nobody except the teacher found fault with Phil’s version, so we all moved on as did Phil, except Phil’s pace was greatly reduced and lots of us 4th graders wondered why he stopped talking in class about that same time…the new metaphor was Birds of a feather stay inside during rainy weather…