Rules for Visiting

by Jessica Francis Kane

and C. S. Lewis proposed ideograms: if lovers are two people facing each other enraptured by the other’s gaze, then friends are two people standing side by side, looking ahead in the same direction.

but generally when I try to talk about myself the stories come out fast and abbreviated. I don’t know the word for this. Repressed, probably. But couldn’t it just as well be modest?

They say that spending time with friends can lower blood pressure, decrease depression and stress, and help relieve chronic pain. One study showed it has as large a positive effect on health as quitting smoking.

Yet spending time with friends is the first thing we drop when life gets busy. This has been shown, too.

I don’t know why people start thank-you notes with the word just. Just a quick note to thank you for a wonderful time. Just wanted to say thanks for everything. It reduces expectations right from the start.

loved gardening catalogs, too. She said it was like no other reading experience because you read for pleasure and knowledge, while at the same time planning the future.

“Did you know people will underestimate the weight of a heavy backpack before climbing a steep hill if they’re standing next to a friend?”

When you are alone in a room, time is slow and not particularly nice. It will wait in the dusty corner and taunt and try to convince you there’s not much point in doing anything. Stay, rest. Wait it out. Penelope waited upstairs. So did my mother. I do not want to do the same.

recent measurements from around the world showed mature evergreens of all species now regularly exceeding previously recorded height records by twenty to thirty feet. “Why?” I asked. Blake settled a little coral impatiens bursting with buds into the soil. “Global warming,” he said. “I think they’re trying to save us.”