Friendkeeping

Friendkeeping

Adult nonfiction
It may have partly to do with having parents overwhelmed with my
sister's disability. But close friends have always felt as essential
as me as air or water. I remember a day from before my fourteenth
birthday. I was walking with Mom and Harriet on the street we'd moved
to to get her a more responsive education. It was evening, close to
dusk. A few houses away there was a party. I could hear the music
and laughter. I thought if we'd stayed home I'd be part of it, not an
outcast. Decades later I can still feel the stabbing pain.
As a mother of grown kids I still find close chums right up
there with family as what makes life worth living. I nurture those
bests as carefully as master gardener John Jemmison tends to his chard
and onions. No wonder when I saw Julie Klam's Friendkeeping on a
shelf I grabbed it, even though that meant a return bus trip all the
way to Bangor Public Library.
I love that book. If you treasure the time you spend with your
girlz or regret being unable to connect with them more or both of the
above you will too. Klam uses an engaging conversational tone to
explore some of the most key (often the most frustrating) issues
effecting today's friendship complexities.
Do you find long distance friendships really difficult to
maintain?
Do you have a cherished chum who is married to or serious about
someone you feel homicidal being in the same room with? Are you there
for all your buds in trouble while maintaining a stoic "I'm fine"
facade even in your moments of deepest crisis? Does a three way
friendship make you fear being replaced? Klam addresses these and
other trials and tribulations in a candid and down to earth style that
is, in my opinion, irresistable.
Klam hooked me when she talked about falling in friendship.
Someone else actually felt the way I did. That heady experience of
sensing a soul mate and wanting to become as special to that person as
she could be to you. Nothing sexual. Better for that complication
being totally out of the picture. I knew I experienced it to the
hilt. But I thought it was just me. An author who can facilitate
that experience has bestowed an incredible gift.
On a personal note, I'm really enjoying friend time with my college
student chums who work in the University's Black Bear Cooperative and
their jovial boss, Lisa Morin.
A great big shout out goes out to them because they are really good
peeps and such fun to be with.
Julia Emily Hathaway




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