A year of coffee dates (and notes on a friendship)
When I moved to New York City three years ago, I was the first non-family employee at ONA—and Jillian was the second. I managed marketing, she managed sales—and we quickly discovered a shared love of pugs, lattes and good books to read on the subway. During the two years I worked at ONA, we sat next to each other and chatted all day long—often about work, but also about our relationships, our favorite new cafes, the things we loved and hated about living in New York City.
When I got a new job at Vimeo in late 2014, Jillian was the first person that I told—and the one I was saddest to tell. Would our work friendship survive and become a real friendship?! We were so used to knowing all of the intricacies of each other’s everyday life that we didn’t want to just get a drink together once a month or once a quarter and have to spend the whole time “catching up” on what’s been going on.
So! We committed to a year of coffee dates in 2015: once a week, we’d wake up early and meet at a coffee shop for a latte, a book exchange, a photo shoot. We drank coffee at Happy Bones, Two Hands, Buvette, Birch, Think, Egg Shop, Black Seed Bagels, Irving Farm, Morgenstern’s, Devocion, Toby’s Estate, La Colombe, Bluestone Lane.
Sometimes we traded coffee for champagne or cocktails: toasting her new apartment in her bigger and better living room, an impromptu rendezvous at 230 Fifth, celebrating our birthdays (just three days apart) at Gallow on the Green, toasting my new apartment on my new balcony.
We frolicked among cherry blossoms at Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, gallery-hopped in Chelsea, jumped in the tulip fields of New York Botanical Gardens, enjoyed the changing foliage of Central Park, splurged on high tea at Bergdorf Goodman. We even met Doug the Pug!
We even went away for a weekend together in Bucks County: we stayed in a rural B&B complete with goats and sheep, searched for covered bridges, went wine tasting and laughed the entire time.
Making the big plans are important–but if life comes down to how we live every day, I’m happiest that we stayed committed to the small things. We never canceled on each other. We never texted the night before or the morning of and said, you know what, I’m really tired or I have a really long day and it’d be easier if I wasn’t waking up before sunrise. We showed up. One of the things that I believe the most about friendship is that showing up is the most important thing: you just have to be there, and you have to be able to be relied upon. And that’s exactly what a year of coffee dates illustrated most clearly.
More than anything, this year has reminded me just how possible things are when you’re intentional about it. Instead of fading away, our friendship got even stronger: I can’t imagine life in New York City without her!
