Rachel Folmar

I’m taking Introduction to Cultural Anthropology with professor Louisa Lombard this semester — highly recommended! — and recently in this course, we learned about kinship. Kinship has many definitions, but the simple way I think of it — far too simple I’m sure — is family.

In lecture, we learned about the three different types of kinship — kinship by blood, kinship by marriage and created kinship. That last one is also called “fictive kinship,” and it’s actually a bit contested in the anthropology world. Some say that it’s separate from “real” kinship. I think this is wrong, but I don’t know if I would have said that before coming to Yale; because at Yale, I’ve discovered fictive kinship for myself.

I walked into Anthropology that day ready to learn about human relationships, thinking I already had a pretty good idea of what those were. Then professor Lombard said the words “fictive kinship,” and it was like I discovered a label for something I already knew existed but still hadn’t quite put my finger on.

I finally understood why the thought of losing the friends I’ve made at Yale brings an ache to my chest. 

Why my friends and I eat together every chance we get. Why we sit in the dining hall at the same table every time, laughing about something one of us did six months ago.

Why we purposefully take classes together. Why we have study sessions late into the night or early in the morning the week before an exam. 

Why they practically steal my water bottle to refill it for me. 

Why I go out of my way to refill the candy bowl on their common room table.

Why we talk about moving to the same town after graduation and buying houses next to one another, picturing our kids playing together some day.

Why “best friends” doesn’t feel like a strong enough word.

I’d never been outrageously social — I spent most of high school studying like I imagine many other Yalies did as well. Sometimes, I would lay my head on my desk, surrounded by piles of textbooks, dreaming of coming to Yale, but I didn’t really know what was waiting for me here.

Yale boasts about its community. 17-year-old me couldn’t have known just how serious Yale was about that claim. I figured the people would be nice — they’d hold the door open and give me directions if I asked. I didn’t know they’d also offer to mop the winter salt stains from my suite’s floor or walk all the way to East Rock to buy a projector so we could watch “Avatar.” 

I’ve found kinship at Yale, and I think that makes me the luckiest person in the world — that I’m here right now, that the stars aligned, that I’ve gotten the chance to make friends I can call family and that I get to say those words at all.

To be fair, it does feel a little corny to admit all of this. Even when I was writing this piece, I wondered if I should hold off on submitting it for publication. I thought maybe I should wait until the week before finals, the end of the semester, the beginning of next semester or the day before I graduate. I felt like words this strong, a declaration this grand — that I’ve found true family at Yale — needed prompting. But what even is a right time, or a right place? Time doesn’t pause; the planet doesn’t stop spinning. Kinship is a big deal. To take it for granted, to let the connections we form at Yale go unappreciated or slip through our fingers, feels sacrilegious. There’s so much love to be found, and I think a random Friday is just as good a time as any to metaphorically shout that from the rooftops.