Rules for Visiting

by Jessica Francis Kane

She was very opinionated, but everyone seemed to agree that the opinions were well informed, insightful, and usually for the benefit of someone else’s problem.

To have an interest in gardens without gardening is like having an interest in food without eating.

“Never has a country so in love with the automobile driven it so poorly.”

But is the American Dream more house or car? Is it putting down roots or being able to move? Most people can’t decide.

Many scientists believe trees can befriend each other, intertwining their roots to share resources and bending their branches to make sure each gets enough sun. Some think that a pair can become so close that when one of the trees dies, the other one dies, too.

We live in a time when everyone gets a medal and all villains have heartbreaking backstories. No one thinks evil is intrinsic anymore, just someone making a really bad choice.

Yet spending time with friends is the first thing we drop when life gets busy. This has been shown, too. Exercise is good for our health, and even the lazy might exercise a couple of times a year. Many people now eat kale. Who among us makes plans to visit friends regularly? We heed so much radical health advice, why not this?

What I packed: two pairs of jeans, one dress, more shoes than I’d probably need, several tank tops, cardigans, and scarves (because layering is to travel as tuning is to music),

In the car Lindy apologized, but I told her not to. The best way to travel is to surrender a little bit of your personality, and I was enjoying not being the most difficult one.

Here’s a question: If a friend tries to make conversation out of a social media post you’ve already seen, do you let her? Consider it, because new material can be awkward.

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. It says: I understand the importance of saying thank you, but I won’t be writing a real letter. It says: I’d like to follow the best social conventions, but I won’t be spending that much time on it. I’ve even seen stationery that has “Just a Note” printed on the front. If you start there, why write the note at all? Consider the synonyms: merely, barely. Would you write: Barely a note to thank you for the visit? Merely a hasty paragraph to acknowledge all you did for me?

Part of the trouble with friendship in the age of documentation is that Lindy knew I would see her update, so it was a communication to me. But it was also a communication to the rest of her friends on Facebook. In a few words, she had summarized and packaged our visit for broader consumption.

When a friend is suffering, it seems you have three options: You can sit silently with her, you can make suggestions, or you can share heartache from your own life. None of the three is as simple as it sounds. I knew someone in college who was so full of advice it was exhausting to share problems with her. You left with a small treatise of self-improvement ideas and the urge to lie down. Share too many of your own stories and tragedy starts to feel competitive.

Even before she went upstairs, my mother liked rainy days because they seemed to reduce expectations;

But it had occurred to me that one of the questions I most wanted to ask my friends was: Can I see an average day in your life right now? A real day, not one curated for social media or filled with the best activities to entertain a visitor. On the one hand, it’s a simple question. On the other, it’s almost too intimate. And it might be impossible, because the presence of a visitor changes a day, no matter how close the friends are.

The news was full of refugees and tent cities and boats full of terrified families fleeing war, and fortunate Americans were walking through immaculate apartments opening other people’s cabinets. I tried to bend this image into something kinder, but it wouldn’t budge.

In addition to Shadow, a few things in Colby’s room had beeped in the night, and I’d had the general sense of a lot of small, menacing figures all around me. When I got up to use the bathroom, I’d stepped on a Lego brick in the dark and my foot was still sore.

This is the problem: conversations like this, where one is more deeply invested than the other, can be frustratingly staggered and incomplete. Vanessa hadn’t done anything wrong. She simply had no idea how much the information meant to me,

Is it real? I once asked Amber. What? she said. Your life! The things that happen to you. Is it real or are you just really good at making it all into stories? She said, I don’t understand the difference. —Alice

I don’t mind walking so I never worry about proximity to the shops and feel sorry for the circling people who do.

The day was hot and the cicadas, the sound of surf for the landlocked, were thrumming.