A couple of months ago a friend invited me to join her Tuesday morning coffee group. I’ve been going regularly ever since. It builds into the structure of my week, but more than that, it’s an enjoyable hour-plus with smart, interesting women, all of us more or less in the same decade (though I may be one of the youngest). We’re usually about 5 or 6, sometimes as many as 8. And when I say smart and interesting, I don’t mean our conversation gets overly solemn or exalted. Last week, for example, we recalled Tupperware parties and burping our food containers. (We laugh a lot.) Today there was commiseration and advice for a woman who is trying to find a dress she likes for her grandson’s wedding. That kind of thing. (And sometimes, also the latest world news.)

I have some long-time close and intimate friendships. I have other relationships in which, though they may be relatively newer, our backstories are so mutually recognizable in important ways that we can move quickly into commentary, and even deep connection, about all we share and already know about the other.

Besides the woman who invited me, and one other person, I don’t interact with the coffee group women outside of Tuesday morning. But I discovered a perfect word in the wonderful novel Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (2024) for what I experience there: amongness. I spotted it twice in the book, once when a character says he had a “sense of amongness” at an event, and another time in the phrase, “a safe little oasis of amongness.” Exactly. Yes.

Amongness: perfect for weekly coffee, welcome, laughter, and talk. Something lovely to bask in and also try to create for others.