A lil' ode to slow burn friendship

Prepare for the nerdiest sentence on the internet…

I have met many of my best friends on earth at conferences. I know, I know. It’s the kind of thing one should probably keep to themselves. But it’s true and I’m so damn grateful that I don’t care if it makes you think of less of me (as surely you were under the assumption that I was devastatingly cool based on my previous posts about altrusim and privatization.)

In any case…this is what I want to say about this: slow burn friendships are revelatory in a way that I never understood until just this moment in my 42 years. While I worry there is a paucity of good art (TV shows, movies, books) about the richness of friendship overall, when it is portrayed, it is typically of the love-at-first-sight variety. Two friends bump into one another on a playground as kids or at a party in their 20s and instantly build a whole world together. Anna and Maya. Ilana and Abbi. Vanessa and Morgan.

But in recent years, I’ve noticed that many of my deepest, most enduring, and delightful friendships are with people that I spent years wondering about and circling around. I met Allison at a conference on civics at least a dozen years ago. We kept in touch. When I visited the Bay Area, I sometimes reached out. After I moved to Oakland, she would invite me to her glorious house parties, even though I was slightly older and less unencumbered than everyone there. I admired her collection of vintage mugs, her sense of style, her wholehearted way of moving through the world. I hoped she liked me, too, but I wasn’t totally sure how much. I tried not to come on too strong. My heart leapt a little when she texted. I loved how she was always up for something weird—a flamenco show, a poetry reading, a Goodwill hit. She happened to move a few blocks away. That seemed promising. When I had a baby she emerged as the ultimate auntie figure—baking cupcakes with the perfect hue of icing for this particular child, moonlighting at the fairy who lives in the small door in the cement near the school, responding with a quick and blissfully simple SURE, NO PROBLEM whenever I asked for last-minute childcare. Then she had her own baby, in the middle of a pandemic, no less; the first time I held Ida was a familial experience. I could feel that both of our bodies knew that. This woman who had once worn a standard issue name tag in a crowd has become one of the loves of my life.

Get you a slow burn friend who will read Berenstain Bears in the top bunk so you don’t have to.

Which I guess is all to say THANK YOU GODDESS FOR MY ALLISON, but also, don’t count anyone out. Sometimes friendship is an explosion, and sometimes it’s a slow, gentle burn that keeps you warmer than you ever could have imagined. I love an easy, disarming connection, but I also really appreciate one that feels like a long, unobtrusive dance (here’s looking at you, Christie). I also love a friend who I thought was someone else’s, like my husband’s, and then realize is also mine (here’s looking at you, Patrice); even my husband’s sister, who was, yes, technically his first, is one of my most satisfying slow burn friends now, someone I never could have predicted I would share so much understanding and delight with. Slow burn friendship is like that—it evades ownership or predictability. It develops at its own pace with its own sweet personality—resistant to being rushed or defined or smothered with expectation. Sometimes your friendship seemed to fall into one category, and then you realize it transcends it (hi Malia!).

This is kind of how cozy some of my slow burn friendships feel.

I tend to be effusive—freely showering friends I adore with compliments and hugs and check-ins. I’m very indiscriminate with an I love you! I don’t know? Life is short. Why wouldn’t I tell you how hot you look in those pants and how much you meant to me? It’s different with many of the slow burn friends I value most; they tend to be more restrained in temperament, women (and a few good others) who save their sweetness for just the right occasion, who give you a well-earned shout-out that makes you feel like a million bucks. And I love that. There’s a pursuit in it that keeps me alive and guessing.

Where will this friendship go next? What deep turn might it take? How lucky am I?