I was at the dinner table with my new Fargo, North Dakota friend and her family, when I looked around at their curious faces.

The conversation had been lively, as we learned about each other’s worlds. They were all characters from my friend’s memoir, So Many Africas, and it was like going back stage on a film set and interviewing the cast.

Finally, I said, “Well, no one has said anything about my southern accent.”

Stunned silence. Until my new writing pal quipped, “That’s because we’re too polite.”

That kind of candor is what I first loved about this woman, this author and gifted essayist, Jill Kandel. We first met at a writer’s conference in Pittsburgh and were only four months into a long distance friendship. A drive vacation to the Midwest with my husband had allowed me to visit on her turf. Here I was, a Florida native in prairie land and loving it.

When I arrived at their home late that Sunday afternoon, Jill’s husband Johan (Hans), their 25-year-old son Ben and his friend Christian were assembled on the driveway around a small foundry with smoke billowing from it. There were aluminum cans lined up and Ben explained that they were burning the impurities off of the metal and “smelting” it down to muffin tin size, raw material for future uses.

Twenty one-year-old Anni was in the kitchen preparing a sauce for dinner. And thirty-two-year-old professional photographer Kristina was organizing and editing images from her latest wedding shoot.

Books were tucked away in all corners of the home and there were numerous workspaces. I felt as though I had stepped onto some sacred creative soil.

Jill and I would only have 24 hours together and we had entire lifetimes to share. After dinner, we settled into a cozy garage-side den around a wood burning stove that Hans had prepared. It was drifting toward midnight when we finally decided to continue our writer’s rap in the morning.

We talked about going on a bike ride the next day, as the sixty-degree temperature was more moderate than either of our native climates generally offered. And we were still talking about that bike ride early the next afternoon, when we were closing in on the last hour of our visit.

Jill had handed me the draft version of Anni’s first novel, which Jill was editing, and it was like reading poetry – deep, thoughtful, moving. I had to remind myself she was just twenty one. Kristina had joined us at the table and we marveled over the commonalities of creatives – photographs, words, watercolors – whatever the medium. We agreed that it takes protected space, collaborators, and an encouraging community to be an artist. In their case, a family unit.

My friend asked me once again about that bike ride, more out of obligation than desire, I could tell. She was enjoying the time with these young women as much as I. We were generations sharing our art. The bike ride would have to wait.