For the Love of Good Friends…

I have had the great good fortune to have made many close friends over the years. Because I have worked full time my entire adult life, the majority of my friends have been made in the workplace. While time, circumstances, and geography have separated us over the years and there have been long spans of time that have passed during which we may have had no contact, we still consider ourselves friends, just not in immediate touch. Well, last Saturday night, thanks to the efforts of two girls that I have known and loved for over 30 years, I was able to get together with a group of friends that I used to work with but had not seen for over 20 years. Many of the ladies in the group had seen each other more recently than I, but quite a few had also been out of touch due to either job changes or having retired. If you are a woman of a certain age, also with good friends you have made and kept over the years, you are going to understand exactly what I mean when I say that the friendships we made while in our twenties and thirties sustained us through many life changes and are made of bonds not easily broken or forgotten. The laughter and tears shared over many of life’s most important “firsts”–first loves, first big break-ups, first marriage, first baby, first divorce, first death of a parent, first home, –are life events that we remember in the context of not only who we shared them with, but who helped us understand who we were as we navigated our way through and around the events that shaped us. Long after we have forgotten the men who had us crying in our proverbial beer–or in our day it would have been our Chardonnay–we remember the friends who were there with us, offering a shoulder, or a ride home, or a spare room.

As everyone began to arrive, what I kept hearing over and over, as women exclaimed hello and embraced, was the same phrase, almost word for word, said to everyone, by everyone, as they hugged each other: “You look EXACTLY the same!!” This was no false flattery that everyone was perpetrating on everyone else–to such good friends, to people who had known each other so well, we DID look exactly the same, in every way that mattered. In this group of women, some 25 of us who were there, was evidence of pretty much everything that life could subject one to, both good and bad. There was heartache and pain, the death of a dream and a spouse who walked away. A good friend widowed after only a few years of marriage to the love of her life. Another friend widowed after many years of marriage who took a chance and remarried but we laughed that after 17 years she still kept her first husband’s name. There were grown children who were rocket scientists and grown children who had grown distant and were a constant worry. Children with health problems and parents with mental health problems. But there was a lot of happy going around as well. One good friend retired last year and remarried and was doing a lot of traveling all over the country in a camper with her fun-loving new husband. Another widowed friend who also retired, had three children who were happy and successful and living close by, was a bit giddy because at nearly 70 years of age she had not only found a boyfriend, but had discovered that sex was a LOT of fun again! And the friend who had lost her young husband after only a few years of marriage was getting ready to retire from her corporate job at age 60 and possibly do some teaching or some volunteer work. She was scared, but also sure that this is what she wanted to do and she was going to step off that ledge with faith that she had prepared herself well for this next phase of her life, and the certain knowledge that she was strong enough to figure it out as she went along. One of the friends who had helped bring this gathering about was recently married to a man who has her living on both coasts and loving it–part time in Seattle and part time in Florida. Her daughter showed up partway through the party to take pictures for us. I remembered when she was pregnant with this beautiful daughter. I was literally speechless when she said she was 31….it hardly seemed possible that so much time could have passed. After all, her mother looked EXACTLY the same….while the daughter? Well, honest to God, she looked all of 19….As we all began talking and laughing and catching up, it was amazing to see how seamless it all was, as if we were picking up where we had left off from a conversation started just last night or last week. Never missing a beat, not a bit of awkwardness or hesitancy. The same eye-rolling and laughter as we told our stories and remembered stories from the past and recalled names and people who had either passed on or moved on. It was a very good night, and I came home feeling so very lucky for these women in my life that I call my friends.

I won’t tell you how many total marriages there are in the group but suffice it to say that the philosophy of many of us, myself included, is to do it until we get it right! And more than a couple of us have finally gotten it right. I have a feeling that before the fat lady sings, every single one of these gals will have gotten it right, whatever their definition of right may be. And while multiple marriages might tell some people that as a group we have collectively bad judgment or perhaps poor moral character, what it tells me is that this is a group of women who do not give up and who refuse to take no for an answer. Who shake their fist at the universe and say “Hell no, I will NOT settle for what you are dishing out!” They each have an inherent sense of hope and optimism that has served them well through some pretty tough times. It has made their good times that much better. It has made them able to be the kind of friend that we all have needed at one point or another in our lives–the kind who has been there, done that, and has the T-shirt or the tattoo to prove it. The kind of friend who knows that if you just hang on, the sun does rise in the morning and so will you. What I saw in their eyes and in their smiles and in their laughter is that they are made of strong stuff. They are made of hope that never gives up, no matter what life throws at them. They are resilience and steadfastness. They may have occasionally been brought low but they have never been broken. Just like our friendships. Strong, hopeful, resilient, steadfast. With kick-ass T-shirts if we were too chicken to get the tattoo. And whether it’s 6 months or 6 years or 20 years before we again get together, I know we will greet each other with open arms and big smiles and the same refrain: “You look EXACTLY the same!!” And we will.

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