The Tenderness of Childhood Friendship

and the golden act of bearing witness

I spent the weekend in Edinburgh visiting my best friend. He moved there for university after high school, and I followed him across the Atlantic to London a year later. We always joked that our 10-year-old selves would find this situation admirable and unbelievable, but reflecting on it seriously makes me realize how lucky I am to have something so special that has lasted so long. I think I spend too much time thinking about what I’ve lost and not enough thinking about what has stayed.

by Yelena Bryskenkova

I grew up watching my mom remain best friends with the people she knew in her youth, how they all still go on their yearly beach trip in the winter and go out to dinner despite having families and living all over the country. I always wondered what the secret was.

David Whyte wrote in Consolations:

The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life […], but no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

Considering my closest and most developed friendships, there has always been a reciprocated act of bearing witness. To growth, to vulnerability, to feelings of joy and despair. There’s my friend in Edinburgh, who was the son of the new art teacher in my fourth-grade class, the first person I can remember who made me feel unapologetically myself. And after all of my different selves, and all of his different selves, and through all of the people who came and went with them, we still laugh like we’re ten and talk like we’re twenty-one. There’s the friend I met in high school, in my human development class at fourteen, complimenting me on my shoes and pronouncing my name right. We clicked over our shared heritage but grew slowly, exponentially, witnessing our adolescent identities unfold like paper fortune tellers, finally resting as two pieces of origami made from the same tree. There’s the friend I met at twenty, who started out as a coworker and asked me to go on a walk when I was having a mid-pandemic breakdown and talked to me for two hours. She fed me soup and we cried together in her apartment and knitted each other new, soft skins with the thickest, sturdiest yarn.

And though fourteen or twenty may not be considered “childhood”, I think that so many of the friendships we have at seven or twelve feel golden because we give them everything. Our hearts are small and open, not yet pressed by adult worries like romantic love or taxes or careers, and there is so much room for that wonderous, childlike dedication. Sometimes, now, I am lucky enough to come across someone who makes me want to rip my chest open and hand over my heart, with that same innate magnetism. And I know it’s good when they set theirs on the table too. I don’t think there will ever be a time limit to growing up, and new friendships sometimes feel like childhood. I think those are the ones that will last.

Last year I had a FaceTime call with the girl who lived across the street from my grandma’s house growing up. I remember having so much fun with her back then, excitement and love filling up my little tender heart so fully that I would throw tantrums when she left our playdates — even though she lived mere feet away. She moved to California when I was eight or nine. We hadn’t talked properly in maybe five or six years, but we talked for more than an hour that day. Maybe it’s because she has a piece of my original heart when it was bright pink and the size of a ping pong ball. And I think I’ll always have a piece of hers. Why do you think so many password security questions include your childhood best friend’s name? Sanna Wani wrote in “Tomorrow is a Place”: There, in the ground, there is our memory. I am near enough my roots. Time is my friend. Tomorrow is a place we are together.

When I was 18 I was convinced I was destined to be alone (independent). I isolated myself from a lot of people, locked up my heart, and tossed the key. But more than anything, this past year has taught me how important it is to have people to render your existence. It is a privilege to watch people grow and allow people to let you grow too. I didn’t even bother looking for the key, I removed the lock altogether. I took the door off of its hinges. Here is my heart, decorated with the fingerprints of those who have held it.

Further Reading

“Love Language” by Rhiannon McGavin

Tweet via @humblecore

“Great Things Have Happened” by Alden Nowlan

Someplace like Montana by Ada Limón

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What I Enjoyed This Week

Recent Reads

• Autumn by Ali Smith. This was probably one of my favorite books I read this year. It’s the first in a four-part “Seasonal” series, which I’m trying to read according to the seasons throughout the next year. Appropriately, Autumn explores our relationship with time, laced with beautiful descriptions, a tender friendship, and a sweetly funny tone. Yet, it still is expertly layered with a sense of urgency, as the present narrative in the novel takes place just after Brexit. All the souls are out marauding. But there are roses, there are still roses. In the damp and the cold, on a bush that looks done, there’s a wide-open rose, still. Look at the colour of it. 5/5. (P.S. I read most of it on the train from Edinburgh, and serendipitously, Ali Smith is Scottish!)

• This Twitter thread by poet Chen Chen about “simplicity” in poetry

• “The Men Are Weeping At The Gym” by Andrew MacMillan. I often openly talk about vulnerability and how I wish we could open up more, but my subconscious tends to neglect the deeply ingrained issue of toxic masculinity. This poem openly (and vulnerably) tackles male weakness and the suppression of it with a deep and appreciated sympathy.

Other Wonderful Things

• The Scottish Poetry Library! I think this was my favorite part of my trip to Edinburgh. The librarian gave us tea and my best friend and I looked through the stacks and read poetry to each other for the better part of an hour (he gave me the MacMillan one!). I could have stayed all day. It’s an amazing place and has a lot of online resources as well.

• Some Edinburgh bookshops I loved: Topping & Co., Lighthouse Books, Typewronger Books, Tills Bookshop. Everyone working was so nice and warm.

• Spotify Wrapped! I played Amoeba by Clairo 86 times and my top artist was Taylor Swift. I was expecting the former, not the latter. Either way, it’s just a fun time of year to be on the internet.

• This song, this song, and this song. Playlist

Thanks for reading. And thank you to my friends! I love you!

<3

Tara