The other night, after Avi said to me — teasingly, of course — that I don’t write about him enough (incidentally, you might be surprised by the number of times I have received that complaint, explicit or implied — I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone who writes about their lives for serious), I said to him, “You require context.” And he said, ” המבין יבין” (”He who understands will understand”).

Which is partly true. Jenn, for instance, has her memories. Sean probably has an idea or two in his head. But it’s hard to see what the two of us have become, out of those days. There are friendships that begin and continue in just the same way, always the same on both sides, comforting in their steadfastness. They are threads knotted around your wrist: keeping you connected to the people you were when you met, helping you hold on to particular incarnations of yourselves. And then there are friendships that not only grow with you but help you grow, until you are twice the people you were when they began. You can trace them back to their sources, but only as a river, rushing strong and sweet, is traced back to a questioning stream.

Here is a stream:

I am 19, freshly unstuck from home and suddenly free to choose the shape of my life in ways I have never contemplated. I have a boy nine thousand miles away, his picture on my desk and a promise in my heart, but did I mention I am nineteen and suddenly free? I am tremendous with hunger for knowledge and experiences and all of my role models in life are still mostly dead white men. I want to be cool, but I don’t want anyone to know I want it so I am guarded with my joy and my confusion, afraid to be too kind. I have many ideas but few ideals: I want to show the world something special, not save it. Still I am ready to stay up all night talking about the universe; that part of me is true. And I hate Brandeis — I want to be in New York City with the bohemians.

Avi is the same, freshly unstuck from an intense first love whose threads still cling about him and tall with a sense of superiority that comes from having grown fond of the way people’s faces look when he shocks them with his intelligence, his arrogance, or his lack of concern for their expectations. He is smart as a tack and just as sharp; he thinks he sees through the rest of the world, but he could stand to ask a few more questions about it first. He wears his religion and his politics with pride. He rubs everyone the wrong way so he can see who smiles instead of frowns. Still he has an air of serious sadness that peeks through his posturing; that part of him is true. And he hates Brandeis — he wants to be at UPenn with the real intellectuals.

We meet at orientation and I like the way he picks a blade of grass and chews on it while everyone introduces themselves. He likes my calm, watchful look. Looking back I can see that we’ve both fallen for the other’s defences. But within days it is us against the world, and by the world we mean everyone who isn’t as sly as we are. The only two sly and slanted people in a straightlaced school, we think.

So there it is, mostly. Avi and I spend almost every evening together for the entirety of the first semester of freshman year (by the spring the stream had already hit a rocky patch); usually several hours every evening. Sometimes I think about that fact, and realize how unusual a thing it is for two people not in love to do. But if I do not walk one way through the corridors of our grotty dorm building to knock on his door, he walks the other way to knock on mine, and then we disappear out the doors to sit on the grass, wander the grounds. All we do is talk. Neither of us is quite who we ought to be, but maybe we can see the shape of our future selves behind the smokescreen, see through to a time when both of us have grown out of our pretensions.

Maybe, but probably not. I’m pretty sure I, at least, thought I was kind of great the way I was.

Here is a river:

I am 27, working full time in a job I would have considered not even worth thinking about eight years ago, neither saving the world nor being famous. Every day I figure out ways to make meaning out of my life despite that fact, and most days I succeed. I have tasted failure for the first time but not the last, and although I thought I would die from it I now know there are few things less fatal. I laugh more than I ever have and hug both friends and strangers with impulsive affection. I am married to the sweetest heart in the world; waking in the morning my heart is gladder than you can know. I have given up on being cool, but I am still ambitious. I want to be good, and kind, and right, and human.

Avi will be the same in two weeks, and he’s on his way to a job that he might have wanted eight years ago but that he is only now wise and compassionate enough to perform well. He has shed, slowly and one skin at a time, his arrogance and his assumptions about the world, and one of the things he does best these days is ask questions about it; his heart and mind are open to love and stories and other people’s wisdom, other people’s questions. He is still smart as a tack but altogether he is softer, sweeter. He wears his love for life and for his friends with pride. I think he too has given up on being cool — almost, anyway. And he too wants to be good, and kind, and right, and human.

There have been moments, these eight years, when we’ve hurt each other or tried to hide our darker selves from each other. But for the most part, I like to think we’ve both had something to do with this water growing sweeter, with our growing up like this: becoming two friends who really do have a reason to love the person the other one is.

There it is.