I met the majority of my friends decades ago. Mostly on playgrounds, when our kids were young and we bonded over sleepless nights and our inability to get our toddlers to eat anything that wasn't white and made of starch. Those picky eaters are all grown up now – they eat tofu, and brussels sprouts – and my friends and I take deep pleasure in our shared histories together.
But I had forgotten what it's like to make a brand new friend, to feel the spark of fresh curiosity, the excitement of discovery, and even the slightly tender uncertainty (does she like me as much as I like her?)
Nancy Fraser and I met during the first summer of the pandemic, when Steve and I were staying in a borrowed house in Vermont. She and her husband, Eli Zaretsky, were spending a pandemic year just up the road. He's an intellectual historian; she's a Marxist feminist philosopher (you can hear her voice and ideas in our show this week, “Against Capitalism.”) They both teach at The New School in New York. We bonded over books and politics and ideas, shared meals and many bottles of wine together – all the things friends do. I've never met their kids, I don't know any of Nancy's other friends and I've never seen her home in New York. So how do I explain my ease in her company? That "there you are!" sense of recognition? The feeling of kinship? Spending time with Nancy has reminded me all over again what a rare gift friendship is. It's made me look at my old friends with new wonder, and made me more grateful than ever for the many ways love shows up in our lives – just when we need it.
–Anne