[...] That summer weekend, I was floating at one end of her pool, looking at her big yellow house and watching her, beautiful in her black-and-white swimsuit, taking care of her two little girls at the other end of the pool with patience and her characteristic disarming silliness. She makes motherhood look as fun as a Saturday night at my local, which is to say, very fun. The joy I felt about her life with these daughters, the good husband she’d managed to keep, the poems — it was so material as to make my heart feel stretched; I felt a different but equal joy about my own life. This witnessing of another’s life with genuine pleasure, even or especially when its different success might threaten your own personal philosophy of life — I’ve been thinking this is true friendship, or a part of it.