“What it means to be with you”

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about constructing social circles and “constructed families”. This is mostly because I’m at the stage of having to create a completely new local social circle from scratch in my new home of New Hampshire (which is not exactly proving easy). Also, I’ve discovered that ‘creating a circle of caring friends’ is the goal of the protagonist in the ancient Roman novel I’m writing, and I’m busy going seeding through earlier chapters the roots of this desire.

Derek Jar...