Make new friends, but keep the old…One is silver and the other gold. This simple song has run through my mind thousands of times since childhood. I think I first learned it in Girl Scouts. Down through the years, though, I’ve never really considered which kind of friendship is silver and which is gold. To my way of thinking, both are platinum.
Interestingly, the author of the poem that led to the song was of the definite opinion that old friends are preferred. Friendships that have stood the test—time and change—are surely best, he wrote. New is good, but old is best.
Joseph Parry was born in a cottage in Wales in 1841. He was 13 when his family immigrated to America where he worked as a miner and an ironworker in Pennsylvania. Later, he returned to Wales, studied music, and became a professor at the University of Wales. He set to music several traditional Welsh writings that were performed widely in both the United Kingdom and the United States during the 1800s.
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Perhaps the inspiration for Parry’s poem came from the Apocryphal book of Sirach: Here is the 1611 King James version of Chapter 9, Verse 10: Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine: when it is old, thou shalt drinke it with pleasure. If you prefer, here is an updated translation of the verse (New American Bible, Catholic Edition 1970): Discard not an old friend, for the new one cannot equal him. A new friend is like new wine which you drink with pleasure only when it has aged .
That word “only” bothers me.
Back in February, I drove to Savannah, GA for an annual book fair and an immersive weekend writing workshop. I did not know the couple, both authors and instructors at the University of South Alabama, who were conducting the workshop. When I first stepped into the candlelit private dining room at Savannah’s historic Marshall House hotel on Friday evening, I had never met any of the other dozen people who registered for the workshop. We and our instructor/hosts surrounded a long table narrow enough for conversation around and across. Bound by the threads of all being writers, we sipped wine, shared backgrounds, and forged new friendships. Our feast of conversation was non-stop that evening except for delicious bites of our crusted grouper dinner.
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Over the weekend, we listened together in small groups to established writers, including John Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried), Jeanette Walls (The Glass Castle), Alice McDermott (Charming Billy), and others. We checked out local restaurants, walked the beautiful squares of Savannah, and, in small groups with our instructors, critiqued each other’s efforts at poetry, short stories, and creative non-fiction. These new friendships did not require aging in order to be appreciated. We dranke of that pleasure right then and there, and many of us have stayed in touch.
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In May, an “old” friend and her husband invited me to attend the Santa Fe International Literary Festival. She and I had become friends years ago when we both served on the planning committee for the annual Writing Today conference at Birmingham-Southern College, and we’d stayed in touch even after they moved west.
At the other end of the friendship spectrum, we dranke the pleasure of many memories. We enjoyed together the opportunities of the Santa Fe festival, including on-stage interviews with David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon), Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See), Kai Bird (American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer), and Anne LaMott (Help, Thanks, Wow and Imperfect Birds), among others. We enjoyed meals inside Santa Fe’s oldest restaurant, on the patio of another, and in the plaza outside the festival venue.
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We drove and walked the Canyon Road, tastefully crammed with galleries of all sorts. And we relaxed and traded stories, as old friends do, long into the evening of my last night in Santa Fe.
Within that span of months from February through May, there were other encounters with long-time friends and with new ones: breakfast downtown with a log-time friend and her husband passing through Birmingham on their “visit every state” bucket list tour; a surprise visit with long-time friend and wonderful editor of one of my books; several new friends (and old) among the sculptors at the Magic of Marble Festival in Sylacauga.
I treasure the opportunities throughout the years to savor friendship—staying in touch and reconnecting with long-time friends on the one hand but also encountering new and often unexpected friendships just as meaningful. I am also grateful to have lived for thirty years in a neighborhood full of not just neighbors but true friends both old and new.
Platinum all around.