On dear friends

When the usual things stop working, when the constellations configure snarls and burdens in your sky, when you and your kindred are weary or sad, when your usual enthusiasms become bland and distant, neglected, useless, colorless, dry, perhaps it behooves you to call on a friend.

Someone who knows you. Someone whose voice cheers and comforts you, who laughs easily in your presence, who talks straight to you always, who accepts your quirks and has some interesting ones in exchange.

These key relationships have a seed, an initial point, a term of growth and acknowledgement.

A regular person might just have walked into a shoe store one day at the same time you did and need a roommate like you do and perhaps you recognize them from one of your English classes and had noticed their propensity toward astute and admirable comments.

This could be the beginning of a friendship that withstands the rigorous transition of marching out of the sheltered dormitory and headlong into the ballyhoo of real life.

This individual might have on the surface appeared to be a tall breathy blonde, a social centerpiece, an adventuress, but one who also relished Proust and who swept the floor as meditation, as well as being already in agreement regarding watching, on a regular basis, the setting sun with compadres and music.

Or you might have moved into an apartment converted from an old tuberculosis sanitarium next to a scarred-up biker with the last name of a fish, who drove his motorcycle into the house every night for safekeeping and who openly trained ridiculously gullible young thugs to run up steep hills for him with backpacks full of stones, but who also happily took good care of his mother and taught you to cut hair pretty well in the front yard.

Perhaps you have a friend who plays the harp and makes delicate porcelain jewelry and who tends toward unusually released and hysterical howls of laughter that leave you, a generally reserved person, giggling for days afterward because what you have said to each other or done was so incredibly absurd.

Someone you hold dear might wear a derby to dinner and then pound on the table for order when you make an attempt at loosening the rules to Scrabble.

Or perhaps your friend was, in her youth, an innocent snake charmer on the East Coast, but now, through training and aptitude, she has become a savvy and generous counselor of young homeless people prone to violence, especially biting.

Maybe they are not agewise your contemporaries, but elders, fern pickers who play dobro with you in the long dark night with endless repertoire and who know not by botany but by common name and usage every living green thing within the weather zone.

Friendships change. Sometimes they fade or get lost, casualties of our mobile society or relocations of the spirit. But that does not alter the good part of the friendship, the part that has nourished and upheld us, helped us to identify ourselves at one time.

Friends teach us, and gently. Even death cannot diminish their power.

Friends bring their slippers to your parties. You know that they like real butter or pickles or light toast or borscht and they know that you will eventually prod them into posed and corny group photos for the sake of history.

These people are anxious to meet your parents. You rejoice in true jubilance their weddings and babies; you celebrate victories together and converge for strength in times of sorrow.

We need this kind of bonding.

So if you find yourself short on time but still needing to gather up a friend or two for dinner, be sure to do it. It's important.

Chicken Limon is quick and easy for such an occasion, especially if you can start it in the morning.

Procure local chicken with healthy looking flesh and the freshest pull date in the batch. Skin this beast and cut the joint off of the drumstick; split the breasts. Put all these pieces into a glass or Pyrex baking dish, 9" x 13". Sprinkle over them:

6-10 cloves fresh garlic, peeled, sliced

juice of 1-2 lemons

lots of fresh dill or fresh rosemary, chopped

or 1 1/2 tsp. dry herbs, crushed

Cover the dish and refrigerate it until you are ready to preheat a large skillet, electric if you have one, to about 325 degrees. Add to the skillet:

2-4 Tbsp. olive or general cooking oil

several garlic slices from marinade

Let the garlic sizzle but not brown, as it becomes unbearably bitter. Remove garlic and add chicken pieces. Allow them to turn golden, turn them over gently, let them simmer until the flesh is fully cooked and the juice runs clear. This usually takes about 20-25 minutes.

Serve with rice, buttered and fluffy, tossed with lemon zest and herbs. Make a pie. Go all out.