Into the Tangle of Friendship

by Kephart, Beth

• ISBN13: 9780618033874
• ISBN10: 0618033874
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-14
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

With her first book, A SLANT OF SUN, Beth Kephart wrote about parenting and drew us, in the words of the National Book Award jurors, into a world of timeless and universal themes: the art of mothering, the cost of difference, and the difference one individual can make. In her second work of nonfiction, she again explores something we often take for granted friendship and invites us to see it as if for the first time. Beginning with the rediscovery of a long-lost best friend, INTO THE TANGLE OF FRIENDSHIP follows the intertwining stories of a cast of characters for whom friendship is a saving grace. We meet a next-door neighbor facing the death of a spouse, watch two young boys learn what it means to be friends, and feel the heartache of a professional caregiver whose compassion and dedication ultimately come up short. Kephart is concerned with the haphazard ways we find one another, the tragedy, boredom, and sheer carelessness that break us apart, the myriad reasons people stay together and grow. What is friendship, and what is its secret calculus? Telling stories to illuminate this question, she also engages us in an essential dialogue about what it means to be fully alive. Profound, original, and exquisitely written, INTO THE TANGLE OF FRIENDSHIP is a hymn to the intimate realities of our lives and what makes those lives not only worth living but magical. It will resonate with anyone who has ever had a friend, or lost one.

Author Biography

Beth Kephart's first book was a National Book Award finalist and was named a best book of the year by Salon.com, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and others. Kephart has won a 2000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 1998 Leeway Grant, and the 1997 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts top grant for fiction. Her essays and articles appear in numerous magazines nationwide

Table of Contents

Prologue	xi
Looping Back In	1	(14)
Among Friends	15	(15)
Reaching Out	30	(13)
Rescue	43	(8)
After Thoughts	51	(13)
Nesting	64	(11)
Back Home	75	(16)
She Was There All Along	91	(9)
Top of the World	100	(11)
A Sudden Turn of Events	111	(9)
Being There	120	(15)
Snapping	135	(19)
Perfect Strangers	154	(8)
From Silence Grows	162	(8)
Correspondence	170	(2)
FAITH	172	(8)
Passing Away	180	(7)
River Wise	187	(7)
Rendezvous	194	(9)
Acknowledgments	203

Excerpts

PROLOGUE Call the wooden climber in the center the seat of power. Call the sandbox and the swings and the splintered tables the hearts of commerce; the shade beneath the oaks, the church; the ravaged muddy creek beyond, this country's borderlands. It is spring a puckering day. The kids alone, in pairs, afraid, delighted, in cars, on foot, in a parade of rusty wagons, on the verge of brave entanglements have finally come. Out on the playground's edge, the sun at my back, I sit and wait and wonder. I watch. I know that the coming hours will shape the children's view of friendship and, consequently, their view of themselves. I know that there will be struggles, winners, losers, so many one-act plays, mysteries and parables. Who is the leader here, and who the disciple? Who will betray, who can be trusted? Who will be drawn in, who locked out? How will passions coalesce, what will be talked about, who will care? When will the accretion of events, hopes, revelations, gifts, become the stuff of memory and faith, a durable philosophy of friendship? The playground bristles. The kids keep coming. A red-cheeked boy with banged-up knees ascends the climber and declares himself king. Below him, in the pit of oyster-colored sand, an artist marvels at his own crystalline creation, then guards its sanctity from the others. Blond and uncompromising, plastic molds and shovels at his feet, he attracts a gaggle of little girls and boys, beguiles them with the magic of the sand. One or two watch in reverent awe: obedient, an audience. The others grow rowdy, impatient, seize the artist's tools, plot a sandbox revolution. A tussle over ownership and rules ensues until some kids run off and some decide to stay, and the morning readjusts to new rhythms and old patterns. Soon boys are dissecting bugs beneath a tree, kids are fishing for algae in the creek, girls are scraping bare toes against the sun as mothers, fathers, nannies, siblings push them higher on the swings. Amid all of this, one child stands forlorn on the fringe a boy without a place to play in this prolific spring. His bucket dangling over his wrist like a bracelet, his hair rolled up like SpaghettiOs beneath a cap, he has come too late, or too timid, and he has come alone. Sitting where I am, the sun now warmer at my back, I imagine how his mind is working, how his heart is feeling, how heavy his bucket feels across his wrist. I imagine that I know him, and in some ways, I'm sure I do. For I too have come alone. I mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend wait here, on the brink. Watching the boy in the baseball cap, watching the others in their silliness and seriousness, their clear unrivaled laughter, I am taken back to years ago when I chose my friends, then they chose me. Friendship, from the very start, was both exotic and pragmatic, a roughing up and a letting down. It was the way I shared what I loved and discovered what was worth sharing; the way I wasted the day, or fractions of day; the way I knew how big or strong or good or protected or likable I for that small instant was. Friendship happened in neighborhoods and classrooms, and lasted for seconds and years. It turned trees into castles and marbles into coins, the streamers on a tricycle into wings of plastic glory. This story, I know, is everybody's story, for the capacity and desire for friendship are scripted right into our genes. Rous-seau's lonely heroes notwithstanding, we are intrinsically social creatures, our very survival inextricably linked to the fabrics we weave ourselves into. Six billion people now throb upon our planet; six billion people must somehow daily get along organize resources, divvy up jewels, agree to certain cust