I'm going to tell you a small tale about being brave.

I have known Donna for close to 20 years. We met in Harmony, where we were both raising children and feeling like awkward weirdos. It was a good way to begin loving each other. Eventually Donna moved to Bangor and then I moved to Portland, but somehow, magically, we stayed good friends, though our children weren't the same age and, on the surface, we didn't share a lot of interests. For instance, Donna is an excellent shopper; I would rather have my eyes poked out. Donna knows everything there is to know about cute hairstyles; I can barely comb my hair. You get the picture.

Last fall, during a search for her older daughter's missing dog, Donna tripped into a ditch and broke both her leg and her arm. This coincided with her younger daughter's departure for college; the pandemic was raging: when I talked to her, I could hear how hopeless she felt. And I felt hopeless too. I lived in another part of the state; what could I do?

But tentatively I asked: "Do you want to read a book together?"

Probably I won't be able to convey how hard a question this was to ask. In Harmony, books were my private freak life. Any kid who came into my house stared in disbelief at the shelves. Most adults didn't mention them at all. I had one friend who would talk about books with me, but otherwise I mostly kept my mouth shut, unless someone asked me to help their kid with English homework. Much as I loved Donna, asking her to read a book with me meant opening a door into a life we had never shared. I feared making her afraid of me, but I also feared that her response would remind me of how stupid my devotions must look to so many of the people around me.

The thing is, Donna answered, "Yes."

She had trepidation, though. She wasn't confident, wasn't sure what she was capable of. So I asked her to choose a children's book she'd always liked, and we started off with a Nancy Drew mystery.

The next week we talked about Nancy, laughed about the plot, the dialogue, her social milieu; recalled our own childhood wistfulness in the face of this. Our reading dates continued. We moved on to Mary Poppins and compared and contrasted Edwardian bourgeois idealism with 1950s suburbia. Then we read The Mouse and His Child, and Donna was transformed. If you have not read Russell Hoban's classic, you should. It is a Dickensian exploration of a mythic Depression-era American dump, populated by discarded windup toys, rats, and various other animals. It is both loving and violent, a shocking book in many ways, but gorgeously written. Donna could not get over her amazement with this complicated piece of art.

Now I suggested that we maybe dip into books written for adults, and we began to read the classic crossover novel To Kill a Mockingbird. That is the book we are currently finishing up, in between long intense conversations about the Jim Crow South, doubts about Atticus as a rounded character, etc., etc. During last weekend's phone call, Donna mentioned that she'd seen a documentary about Flannery O'Connor, whom she recalled having read in high school, and was struck by O'Connor's statement that she couldn't ask James Baldwin to her home in rural Georgia. She would have to meet him elsewhere because "she had to live in that town." I said, "We could read an O'Connor story and a Baldwin essay and talk about them as a pair." And now that is our plan.

Flashback: do you remember that this all started with Nancy Drew? And now we're getting ready to read James Baldwin?

* * *

It's possible that you think that this experience with Donna has taught me a lesson: e.g., don't be afraid to ask your friends to share what you love. Apparently, however, that lesson is really hard to absorb. Because, as you might have noticed, all of these books we've been reading together are prose. Did I suggest that we should read poems? I did not, because I assumed Donna wouldn't want to, that poems would be asking too much, probably she thinks they're dumb, I won't push it.

Argh.

So last weekend I made myself take the risk. Nervously, I told her about a new program at the Frost Place, an online series we're calling the Poet's Table: short, accessible, inexpensive gatherings that present a few poems around a theme, along with a few writing prompts, and give us all a chance to write and share, maybe for the very first time, maybe after a long dry spell, maybe just because we want to meet some like-minded people.

Our first session is called "So Happy Together": Reading and Writing about Friendship. It will be led by Carlene Gadapee, a high school teacher, a long-time Frost Place alum, an indispensable member of our programming staff. I won't be teaching this class; I'll be a participant. But I did help design it, and one of my ideas was to have a special "friend" rate: $20 if you apply alone, $30 if you bring a friend.

I had to walk the walk. So, with anxiety, I asked Donna if she would like to attend the class with me, as my treat. Her response: "Oh, Dawn, I would love to."

* * *

So what's the point of this rambling tale? Of course I want you to take this class with me so we can spend two hours together on a Saturday afternoon, writing and reading and feeling close. Also, I want you to meet the fabulous Donna. But even more, I want to encourage you to take the risk of saying, "Friend, here is what I love. I want to share it with you."

Why is that so hard? I don't know why, but it is: it's incredibly hard. Still, if you try, something miraculous could happen.