Henrietta Hay's Column

"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature," said Ralph Waldo Emerson.

There have been wonderful friendships in the past, many recorded in poetry and song. But in our terribly confused, frightening world today, friendships may well be more important than they have ever been.

I have outlived most of the friends of my youth. The friends of my old age are beyond price.

The Women's movement has made women's friendships take on a new luster as we learn to respect each other as individuals with new strengths.

Certainly women's friendships and men's are different. Men are more silent. Women share more. As women we tend to think that men's friendships consist of playing or watching football, drinking beer, and slapping each other on the back. "Tain't necessarily so!

There are two groups of friends who have early morning coffee once a week at one of the local coffee shops. One is women only. The other is men only, with the occasional exception of a wife or two. The women's group has been getting together for only about five years and meet only once a week, but already we have outlasted one coffee shop.

But the men have been sharing morning coffee and friendship for over 25 years. In 1975 one of them had a business but at the moment no office. So he and his staff met for coffee each morning and he handed out the day's work assignments. Gradually his friends started showing up and soon the group of friends was meeting six mornings a week for coffee -- and they have been doing it ever since. They meet at a different place each day of the week and report that they have outlasted about 5 coffee sources. About half of the men are now retired. And once every year they take their golf clubs and head for a men only retreat in Mesquite.

We kid each other and laugh a lot. We don't discuss politics seriously, but I suspect that they would welcome Bill Clinton at their table with about the same enthusiasm that we would show George Bush if he were to show up at ours.

Civilized dialogue is possible, even today. There is another group of long time friends that I have discovered, although I have never met any of them. They are women and they live in Downeast, Maine. There really is such a town. For more than 25 years they have gathered weekly in each other's homes to spin, share life changes and build a community of artists working in wool. "We found each other at town meetings, the food coop, craft galleries, and those of us with common interests in sheep and wool began meeting with other rural women in a twentieth century version of the spinning circle common in colonial New England, and serving much the same purpose -learning woolcraft from each other, sharing household hints, recipes, seeds, advice, and, yes, news and feminist politics." The weekly gatherings still revolve around spinning, soup, and a pot of coffee. Coffee is universal. And so is friendship. I treasure an e-mail from one of them, "And isn't it great to find uppity women across this land of ours. We sound different when we speak, but we are all speaking the same language." You can find them at www.wearingwool.com

Their major claim to fame is the wonderful 2003 calendar they put together, inspired by the Rylestone ladies. Where the English ladies wore only pearls, the Maine models, age 33 to 77 wear nothing but a bit of wool, a very little bit. And they are all beautiful.

I can only hope, however, that our male coffee klatch does not choose to follow their example.

Kenneth Branagh said it better than I can, "Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports."