Helen remembers our return to Boston, the day she saw me again at church. I don't share the memory; I have none of that moment, so I borrow hers. I like the scene she presents: a dark chapel lit only by candles, the scent of incense, the rhythm of Byzantine chants, and two little girls peering at each other from behind their fathers' legs.

What I do remember from those early days is sitting with her in Sunday school, playing with her toy kitchen in her parents' basement, and receiving from her the book about a raccoon when we played school. She, as usual, was the teacher and I the student.

Then there are the memories we both have, of reading about Narnia and writing letters that built on Lewis's stories, of staying up late on the weekends to continue the tales begun in our letters, one of us picking up where the other left off. Even at 12 and 13 we knew how to craft tales the other needed to hear, what heights of melodrama should be reached, what minute description was needed for a certain ball gown, what qualities the hero should have.

When she got married—nine years before I did—her relatives congratulated me. This public acknowledgment of our friendship's significance startled me. At 21, I already knew that while our relationship was one of the most significant in my life, my world generally did not recognize such a bond. Despite my education at a women's college, my younger self battled with societal messages that suggested friendships were just way stations on the journey toward marriage and children. I wanted those things too, but not at the expense of my friendship with Helen. There had to be a significant place in my adult life for this bond.

There is, of course. She is still my dear friend. A continent separates us, but she writes me. I, the terrible correspondent, call her, and she calls me back. Then she writes again. I daydream about traveling in Europe with her once we are freed somewhat from our domestic ties. I am still guilt-ridden over my obliviousness to the life-altering tumult that engulfed her when she had children. When I gave birth, much later, and made stupid postpartum choices (both times), she arrived, made me sleep, cooked for me, and the second time scrubbed my kitchen so we could put the house on the market.

Recently, the emphasis of our popular culture seems to have shifted, now celebrating the importance of friendships, particularly of women (as if to make up for centuries-old celebrations of male bonding). Now there are movies, books, television serials, corny emails all preaching that it's your girlfriends that get you through. Yet I can't escape the niggling feeling that it's not all sincere. Has Madison Avenue gotten to us once again: don't just buy cards, presents, flowers for your lover, buy them for your friends? Or maybe it's just that we are trying to find comfort in the face of a mind-numbing divorce rate. It seems that we still don't quite trust friendship, that we don't really understand it, that we are always waiting for the "real" story, the sexual undercurrents to rise to the surface.

But even if it's true that there has been a sea change, that we finally recognize the power of friendship, isn't it old friendship we're talking about? We now acknowledge the importance of maintaining friendships while we pursue our romantic lives. But what about remembering to pursue friendships?

"Only connect," E.M. Forester advised, reminding us how the nature of our relationships reflects the state of our souls. A compelling thought now that I'm in a barren period. I write this living in a new city where I have not yet made a friend. This is very strange for me. I have always had a large community. Even when I have moved to places where I'm a fish out of water, I have very quickly built bonds.

My first inclination was to blame the combination on moving and motherhood, the isolation that results from not yet having found a job, from the all-encompassing work of caring for babies. But I think this impulse is not right. My friend who is 500 miles away, the one whose parties were packed, the one whom everyone ran to for kind words tells me that she is unbearably lonely. "I have lived in this place for two years. I do not have a friend. This has never happened to me before." Another friend, across the country, in a small Southern city, shares similar sentiments. She and her husband have had a hard time making connections. "Everyone seems to have their friends. They don't want anymore."

When another friend of mine returned from a visit home to Europe, she was melancholy. "I saw my school friends," she said. She has had a hard time getting close to Americans, but to me she said, "We could have been good friends." We were both about to move.

And there are many more stories like this I could tell, of friends who are scattered across the country, who are startled by their inability to make new connections. Their ages range—30s, 40s, 50s—their jobs too; some are married, some are not; some have children. And they have all hit a wall.

"Is it the moon?" we wonder. "Something in the air?"

"Army wives must go through this," a friend, a new bride of a military man, told me. Her husband draws people to him wherever he goes, but she does not want his skill. She wants her old friends around her, the ones she knows well, the ones who share a history with her. "I'm tired of taking chances," she said.

Maybe this is the problem; we are an exhausted nation. But we are also a restless one; we rarely stay near our old friends. Because of this, I have schlepped my children across the country numerous times, young as they are. I want my old friends to know them. I want my children to feel they are part of a larger community. I don't want them to rely only on romantic love as fleeting and fragile as it can be. Our knights, our champions, I'm increasingly convinced, are our friends.

But I don't want them to think that friendship is just something for holidays and vacations. My bond with Helen augmented my childhood. It sustains my adulthood, and because of it, I know the importance of such connections. I know that I do not want to live without friendship in my daily life, and I know that the moment I stop wanting it, I will have lost something precious. So what alternative do I really have?

Maria Jerinic is mother of three children, a professor in the Honors College of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and an editor for Victorian Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press). Her personal essay "License to Knit" appears in KnitLit the Third: We Spin More Yarns, and her essay "Problems with Pigeons" appeared in the Winter 2006 Mom-Writer's Literary Magazine. Maria's critical essays have appeared in collections published by St. Martin's Press, Cambridge University Press, and SUNY Press.