Let's Cut to the Chase & Be Friends

a revolutionary way to approach grownup friendship

Happy July! This month, I’m taking a creative rest, and so I scheduled this post for you ahead of time. If I’m not as quick to respond to comments or messages as usual, that’s why. But please know that I love to hear from you, and I will respond at one point or another!

I made a new friend a couple of months ago. 

Given that I have three small children and spend most days squirreled away writing in my attic office, that in itself feels noteworthy. But it’s the way this friendship started that was truly revolutionary, and I think there’s a takeaway here for all of us—parents of young children or not.

This is how it began: 

In April, the Kennebunk Free Library was generously hosting me for a reading of poetry from my new collection, The Shape I Take. A couple of minutes after I’d begun, a woman I’d never met swept into the room. She was pushing a stroller and her face was radiant and from the moment she sat down, it was evident that she knew and loved poetry. She nodded, smiled, and cried at all the appropriate times, and in between her baby’s coos and feedings she bounced him on her knee and made little audible signs of agreement. As she burped the little boy with one hand and snapped her fingers with the other, I found myself thinking from the podium, “Who is that?”  

After the reading was over, she introduced herself to me, sharing that she too was a poet. Then—as if it was the most natural thing in the world—she declared she wanted to be my friend and asked if I wanted to be hers too. 

I was floored; I mean, my jaw might have actually brushed the ground. I consider myself friendly, but never have I once just up and asked someone to be my friend. No; that simply does not happen in these parts. My New England sensibilities caution me to ease in, so I usually start by dipping my toes, submerging my knees, grazing the surface with my fingertips. You know. Safely.

But this woman? She cannonballed. And I was delighted.

It’s gotten me to thinking about friendship in the middle-of-life years. I believe many of us have these shadows of our younger selves still living within us; though we may be decades older and more sophisticated, we still harbor these children (mine has a choker and glitter lip gloss, anyone else?) who are longing for late-night confessions and whole days of play and the kind of de facto friends who are just there for us. It doesn’t matter how old we are; we still want to be seen, known, and flat-out accepted. We still long for the friendships that were afforded by our youth—only now we want them in grown-up form. 

The heart wants what the heart wants, but practicality is a real dream-crusher. With our various combinations of spouses and children and pets and plants and careers and commitments and hobbies and home and ailments, it feels simply impractical to hope for that kind of friendship anymore. We feel the ache of the discrepancy between the type of friendships we desire and the type of friendships that are actually attainable right now. 

We know we are made to be creatures of community—but we are also aware of our limits. When it comes to our time, energy, and willingness to be awake after 8 PM, we are terribly finite beings.

We could allow this reality to snuff out all possible attempts for friend-making. Or, we could look at it as an opportunity: a chance to reinvent the rules. Finesse may have been fine when we were school kids and had no bills to pay or souls to keep alive, but now we need connection sans the tedium. So what if we just started asking for what we want? What if we were clear about our hopes and desires—and even our fears and vulnerabilities? My experience with my new friend has convinced me that a friendship built in this way is not only possible, but also incredibly refreshing. Someone’s just got to be willing to cannonball first. 

I once heard the fascinating idea of writing a poem that instructs others how to love you well.

And it made me think: what if we all wrote one of these, in a friendship edition? Instead of playing hard to get with potential friends, what if we were just radically generous and handed people a copy of exactly what we were looking for in our friendships? No more sitting around hoping the cool mom will notice us from across the t-ball field or wondering whether we’ll bump into our bestie-soulmate at the park. Nope. We could just walk right up to them and hand them the list, and say, “I like you, do you like me? Let’s just cut to the chase and be friends. Look, I even come with instructions!” 

In the spirit of radical generosity, here’s mine. Sure, it’s a little silly—but more than a piece of me thinks it might just be wild enough to work. Let’s cannonball into friendship. I’ll go first. 

HOW TO LOVE ME WELL 
friendship edition

I am no giver of feeble hugs;
I’ll try to never insult you
with such a paltry offering
in the currency of love

I can even support
splashy displays, like
linked arms while we walk or
the fine art of 
air kisses—those robust
happy greetings 

but you’ll have to jump first
in that regard, for my love language is
more 

the satisfied sipping of 
the crispest wine you can find 

just enough to be special, around $15.99 

where we’ll let our musings be staccatos
in the way of women who know

that talk is welcomed
though words are cheap 
and this showing up 
in flesh and bones

no matter how they sag,
ache, moan

this is what makes me 
feel at home, and known 

and if you like bouquets of
books and croissants with your
Tuesdays and you’ll spare me 
the tiptoed tedium; if you’ll show
up and cheer, not because 
you must but because you are fit 
to bust with the heady importance 
of being here
in this holy act of 

sisterhood 

then I love you already 
it is not hard 
to love me well 

just showing up 
is the key, as far as I 
can tell. 

---

* This article was first published in my monthly parenting column in The Village in the June 2024 issue.

What instructions would you give a friend for loving you well?