The Best of Friends
By some definitions, I have a lot of friends. Facebook says I have nearly 5,000 friends. But in truth, most of those people are strangers. I've been in the yarn business for nearly 25 years and have met hundreds of people during that time who will happily take my call today. We know each other and have cordial feelings toward each other. We are friends.
But close friends? The kind of friends you can call on in a crisis, the friends who can be relied on to show up for you, and for whom you in turn will drop everything? That is a much smaller number.
There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.
― Linda Grayson
I've been thinking about friendships because I recently finished reading The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center by Rhaina Cohen.
Cohen is a Washington, DC, based journalist who works as a producer and editor at National Public Radio. She specializes in the social sciences, and her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.
Most of us have been raised to believe marriage, with its social, financial, legal, parental, and sexual union between two people, is the preferred framework for a productive adult life. But "til death do us part" isn't really working anymore (if it ever did). Nearly 50% of all marriages in the United States end in divorce or separation. And more than 25% of adults never marry. Could it be we're asking too much of marriage?
Cohen's book is a direct challenge to the privileged position of marriage in Western society. She takes us into the lives of people who have chosen a friend as their life partner—living together, parenting together, buying homes together, and being each other's caregiver in the absence of a romantic or sexual relationship. Cutting across gender, class, sexual identity, and racial lines, these long-term committed relationships fill many of the same roles traditionally assigned to marriage.
After two failed marriages, I've been happily single since 1999. Have there been times I've envied those with successful marriages? You bet. It must be nice to have a partner you can truly rely on in good times and in bad. I'm looking at knee replacement surgery in the coming months. As a single person living alone with most of my family thousands of miles away, the logistics of this surgery are a challenge. I prize my independence. It is not easy for me to ask for the help I will need. I am immensely grateful for the friends who respond, "Don't worry about it. We've got you."
“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you.”
― A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner
The Other Significant Others is a passionate defense and celebration of chosen families. If you're looking for models for your own unconventional relationships or struggling to understand the choices of the unmarried people in your life, this book is for you. The audiobook is read by the author, and her experience as a radio producer shows in her reading.
Listen to Rhaina Cohen’s conversation with Ezra Klein here.
Note: Book titles are linked to Bookshop.org, a non-profit that supports independent bookstores. These are affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.
On the knitting front, work is ongoing to complete those design commissions. In the meantime, my flirtation with bead crochet has continued. I started with Laura Nelkin's Sprang Cuff pattern and just kept going (and going) to make this necklace.
The bead crochet tube is 12½" long; the entire necklace is 21" long and sits nicely just below my collarbone. I love pink, and this piece looks marvelous with black, navy, burgundy, and white. I sourced the beads and other materials from Artbeads.com.
Also not knitting, but fiber-related: My friends at Modern Daily Knitting are holding their annual Summer Camp next month. Based on the premise that the best part of summer camp is the crafts, this is a 3-hour Zoom workshop scheduled for Friday, July 19. We will be learning to weave a raffia basket! Purchase of the kit includes your enrollment in the workshop. No worries if the date doesn't work for you—you'll have access to a recording of the event.
I've never done any basket weaving, and this looks like a fun project. After my experience with "beginner's mind" learning bead crochet, I want more! Making mistakes, feeling incompetent, figuring it out—sign me up!
Good company, camp crafts, and BYO s'mores, with no bug spray required. We'll even get a souvenir patch suitable for sewing onto a Girl Scout sash (or a project bag). Won't you join me?
The summer solstice is today in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun will set at 8:40 pm, but twilight will linger until well past 9. I plan to be sitting outdoors enjoying the long, warm evening with a glass of wine. How about you?
Continue the conversation—leave a comment about the place of friendship in your life or tell me how you will celebrate the solstice.
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I hope the surgery goes well and wish you a speedy recovery. Thank you for the book recommendation. A reimagining is definitely in order.
I hope your surgery and recovery go well, Sandi. Thank you for all the recommendations. I signed up for the basket weaving course. Not that I need another project, but I’ve bought kits from Anne Weil before and have been very happy with them so that sealed it for me. I have a bit of a basket fetish too so it would be good to learn to make my own 😉