Generations, and half a lifetime.

I had lunch on Sunday with four of my dear friends from college. Everybody had a baby with them: one 4.5 month old, 2 2 month olds, and 1 baby in utero 2 days overdue. I had Grace. All of these friends have older children, but on Sunday it was striking to me to look at Grace and look at the babies and see both the wide gulf and the immense commonality between them.

I could not stop thinking of Quincy‘s wedding day, 7 years ago today (6/21/03), and of the baby Grace was then. And here she was, 7 years later, holding Quincy’s third baby (also Grace, called Hallsie) in her lap. It brought tears to my eyes to think of the march of years, of the overlapping generations and of the interwoven relationships that I hope will carry me through the rest of my life.

Almost 8 years ago, when Grace was one month old, Quincy agreed to be Grace’s godmother.

I don’t believe the dour expression on Grace’s baby face adequately conveys her delight at this relationship, which is, as we know, for life (QB, you’re stuck with us!). I do remember that she marked the occasion on that day by spitting up all over Quincy’s gray sweater.

7 years ago, Grace was 8 months old and came to the brunch the day of Quincy’s wedding.
This was my dearest friend’s wedding day, and here she is holding my daughter, her goddaughter. I don’t even know what other words to use to describe this picture. Maybe it doesn’t need them.

And here is Grace Eldredge holding Grace Hall (Hallsie), 6/20/2010.

It stuns me to think of these women, not just Quincy but also Kara, Ank, and Bouff, and others who were not there on Sunday, and of what we’ve shared and how far we’ve come. These are the friends who were there with me when I was becoming who I am. It is extraordinary to think that we met almost 18 years ago. We’ve known each other half of our lives. And that in the years since we have married and divorced, gone to school and gone around the world, welcomed children and buried parents, cried and laughed and drunk countless bottles of wine and written thousands of words back and forth. We have celebrated each other at the high points and carried each other through the low points. These are the friends I come back to, over and over again, the first real community of friends I ever had. These women will never know the extraordinary sigh of relief they allowed me to take deep in my soul: for once, finally, I felt I belonged.

I think back to what I wrote in the fall of 2006, almost four years ago, and it’s all still relevant today:

…The ladies who will always be the touchstone … [I] marvel at how lucky I am to have each of you in my life. What extraordinary role models and companions you are! We’re all making – and will continue to make – different and varied choices, and I trust that we’ll continue to respect and honor each other no matter what those choices are. This kind of implicit understanding is rare and special, and the further I travel away from Princeton the more convinced I am that the friendships I made there will be the most enduring of my life. There will be and are other incredibly special friends, but as a community you all are ground zero: yardstick and safe haven, the people who knew me when I was becoming who I am. Your importance grows clearer every day.

And now, to watch all of these women, who reflect me in so many ways, become mothers and adults and professionals and wives and ever more impressive to me … well, it takes my breath away. To watch our children together. To hear their childrens’ voices singing happy birthday to me on my birthday. To watch them grow in the photos we all sporadically send.

We are all so enormously changed and yet we are so fundamentally the same. When we get together it take about four minutes to be back in our personal private language of abbreviations and references. Who else knows what that there’s a T and a P and this ain’t it, who said, “Back off, b**ch, it’s my birthday,” what a DTR is and what TDF means? Who else shared broken bones in the snow, terrible white wine at YY Doodles, countless long nights at the library working on our theses, and dancing a hundred times over to Oh What a Night?

How profoundly I trust that the sturdy line of connection that travels between each of our hearts, criss-crossing the country like an invisible tin-can telephone. I am so grateful for these relationships, within whom our irreplaceable and vital history is knit with our current lives; the resulting cord, tangled and bright with memory, steadies and sustains me. I am so grateful to these women for their presence in my life.