Most of what I know about close, lifelong female friendships—the all-consuming kind, that start in the sandbox, continue through confidences about first periods and first gropings with boys, and survive marriage and children (though of course the friends are maids of honor and aunties to each other's children)—comes from books. Anne Shirley and Diana Barry, Betsy and Tacy, other characters from way more mediocre novels whose names I can't remember now, but who also share a deep and abiding, though strictly platonic, love.…
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