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Charlotte K's avatar

I went to college in NYC so my perspective on friendship there is a bit different. Our favorite activity during the day (this was the 1970s) was sitting in a coffee shop ordering successive cheap food and just yakking. Or we walked up Madison Ave on our way to the Met, looking in windows, back when it wasn't all chain and designer stores. In late middle age I have a lot of friends, but even pre-Covid most of them live elsewhere, and the ones nearby have a predilection for "doing" and "activities" and not hanging out. I've welcomed Covid as meaning, well, we can't do that, we have to sit on the front porch with blankets piled up and just talk.

My oldest friend from childhood and I were apart for 20+ years and then in our 40s she rather miraculously and accidentally wound up moving to the same town where I live now. We would sit and talk for hours in my living room or hers, and it was such a gift to be with someone who knew me (and her) in such depth. She had to move again to take care of her very elderly mother, and do I ever miss that idle hanging out, talking about what we were reading, watching, cooking, thinking, wishing, hoping, listening to, wearing, people around us, etc. etc.

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Laura C's avatar

I love this so much. I met my best friend in grad school and we spent so much time browsing the sale racks at Anthropologie that 1) we learned when they moved new stuff to sale and 2) when she moved away the staff asked me about her. The second most recent time I saw her, I flew to Toronto for one day and sat around while she packed for another international move and shopped for a present for a birthday party her daughter was attending and picked up the kids from school. The 6am and 8pm flights were absolutely worth it.

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