Every once in a while, I like to feature a guest post. It is good to look at joy from a different view than just mine.
This week Undaunted Joy features LuElla D’Amico. LuElla and I met at Catholic Imagination Conference last fall. She has become a sort of encouragement and prayer for me through the last year. I had the JOY of seeing her in person recently as we attended a collaborative conference on Whidbey Island, even sharing a very bare-bones room together. I am grateful for this woman—her words and her scholarship. Today she shares a tender reflection on friendship and her daughter.
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Over the summer, my seven-year-old daughter asked me if she could use her allowance money to buy a friendship necklace—one of those broken hearts that says "Best" on one side and "Friend" on the other—to share with another little girl in her school. I remembered these necklaces well from my childhood, and it astounded me a little that they are still prevalent. It also astounded me that this trinket is what my daughter wanted to use her hard-earned summer allowance for. It shouldn't have.
After all, while I was surprised these necklaces were still in existence from my childhood, I learned through a little research that these types of trinkets have been around since the earliest civilizations. For example, archaeological evidence from ancient Egypt has revealed that friends exchanged amulets and pendants. These amulets often featured motifs of deities or animals, believed to provide protection and blessings to the wearer. Likewise, knights and nobles exchanged loyalty tokens in the medieval chivalric tradition to demonstrate materially their code of conduct. These tokens could take various forms, including rings, brooches, badges, or fabric bands.
When I was in the fifth grade, a girl down the street and I often met at her house to make bracelets for each other and our little neighborhood group. When my daughter asked for her necklace, I recalled that the girl I made bracelets with in elementary school was never my "best friend," so to speak. She and I didn't have much in common, only that we lived nearby, and now, I think, both wanted a close friend to share a bracelet (or two) with. I looked her up on Facebook just now, a little surprised we're "friends" there still. She's an athletic influencer and owns many, many dogs, it seems. I do yoga once in a blue moon and had to be convinced after years to buy our lone family dog.
I tell this story because before the school year started, my daughter tried to give half of her necklace to another little girl than the one she originally bought the necklace for; she so wanted to enact the joy of friendship that it was hard for her to contain her excitement about sharing this necklace with someone, even if it wasn't the person she originally intended. I didn't let her give the necklace away before school started, and I am not entirely convinced this was the right decision.
Upon reflection, I am convinced, however, that friendship is a joy we all long for as humans, from our childhoods to our adulthoods, from ancient civilizations to today. Sometimes, we find those "kindred spirits," as Anne of Green Gables might say, those friends we click with from the start, whom we laugh with about the same jokes, and whom we cannot wait to spend more time with. And sometimes, we find friends in a particular moment, friends who don't need to be our other halves, who maybe find different jokes funny than we do, but whom we still enjoy bracelet-making with or morning cups of coffee with as we wait for the job on our office printer to finish.
All of these friends are part of the joy that makes up our lives, and in some ways, they all are our "best friends," friends who God put in our lives to help create the music that is our everyday existence. It matters not so much that we have a "best" particular friend, but that friendship itself is best, and we humans want to give and receive it. We want to listen to the music it brings to us and create that music with and for someone else.
The necklace is currently packed in my daughter's backpack, ready for next week's first day of school. I know she will have given it away when she comes home from the first day. I'm unsure who she will give it to, the girl she saved to buy the necklace for or someone else. What I am sure of, though, is that I'm glad my daughter spent her summer allowance on the joy of friendship and what it represents to her. In her little way, she worked not for herself this summer but for others. She worked to give joy.
Finally, for those of you who have read until this point, it is likely unsurprising to hear that if I were in my daughter's shoes and had a necklace to give, I'd most certainly give it to whom I consider my best friend—her.
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LuElla D'Amico is an Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of the Incarnate Word. She researches and teaches about girlhood studies, early United States literature, children's literature, and women's religious writing. She lives on the outskirts of San Antonio with her husband, two children, and a dog. In her spare time, she loves checking out used bookstores.
If you would like to write a guest post, send me your submission. Perhaps we can find a home for it! With 1200 subscribers, I’d love to use this Substack to share other joyful voices.
Thank you, Shemaiah for inviting a friend to share your readership. That, in itself is an act of friendship.
Oh, I love this! And I love the idea that having a best friend isn't the whole idea; but what is most important is being your best and most generous self when sharing friendship. A joy for sure!