dear friends

I’m off this morning to Florida to spend the weekend with my friends from Princeton.  There are a couple of notable absences, but there will be a large group of us and I am eager for two days in such familiar and joyful company.

We all knew each other when we were becoming who we are now.  Knew each other before we were mothers and wives and partners at McKinsey.  Before we had real responsibilities, a smattering of wrinkles, and the occasional designer purse.  We’ve shared a lot in the 14 years since we graduated: marriages, divorces, the perfect macaroni and cheese recipe, births, deaths, book recommendations, surprises both joyful and heartbreaking.  We’ve visited each others’ brand new babies in the hospital and we have stood next to each other when we buried parents.  We were and are each others’ bridesmaids and childrens’ godmothers.

We hold each others’ stories, and that is a unique and privileged position.

I’m still struck dumb, honestly, by the fact that women as fantastic as these would hold me dear.  These are strong and intelligent and compassionate and beautiful and gentle and deeply human women, every single one of them.  I respect the choices they’ve made, whether they are similar to mine or different, and I know I can trust them to be gentle with my decisions.   With these women, I am as comfortable as I am anywhere else in the world.  In their light, I am brave, not shy.

I think, again, of the powerful Adrienne Rich (who these women remind me of, because I wrote my college thesis on her) and of the line “There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.”  We sit down together, we weep, we laugh, and we are all warriors.  All in our own way.  But we are safe together.

One of our favorite things to do is to sit around and look at old pictures.  Pathetic, maybe.  Entertaining, absolutely.  Just a few of the many moments we’ve shared; I’m sure there will be hundreds of pictures from this weekend to add to the pile.  I can’t wait.

I wrote this several days ago … and while my loyalty to and love for my friends has not waned, remotely, I felt a wave of trepidation wash over me this week.  I’m feeling fragile, and raw, and my instinct is to hole up under my covers.  I’ve never had thick skin but in the last few months I feel as though it’s gone entirely; it’s not easy or particularly fun to go through my days without any shield between me and the world.  My true safe havens are few.  Here’s hoping the company of old friends this weekend is one.

I am back from an evening of old and new friends, listening to the rain, wistful and thoughtful.  I met my dear friend Trintje for a glass of wine.  I don’t see her nearly enough but when I do we slip right back into the comfortable rapport of old friends.  We know each others’ backstories, and can pick up where the story left off with ease.  Once again I found myself swearing that we’d see each other more, find a way to reconnect our children, who were each others’ first friends.  I hope we do.  We went together to hear Katrina Kenison read, which was, as always, a pleasure that it’s hard to put into words.  It was especially wonderful to see Trintje, arguably my first mother friend, hearing Katrina’s words about motherhood for the first time.  I felt past and present – and future – overlapping like soft waves on a beach.

The tide goes in, the tide goes out.

One minute we are leaving sleeping infants in pack and plays to skinnydip, and the next minute we are cheering those same children as they swim to the dock all by themselves.  Those children, rounding the corner to 8 years old, each others’ first friends. Though they don’t know each other anymore, their bonds endure, even if only in my mind: it makes me irrationally happy that they are, unbeknownst to each other, being Harry Potter and Hermione Granger for Halloween this year.

There are few people who embody the passage of time for me the way Trintje does; we were friends in the early days, when we were so tired we felt we had sand in our eyes, when we were so disoriented and shell-shocked we thought we would never stand upright again. And now that we are, we find ourselves nostalgic for the wild magic of those days.

Then I came home and went to tuck Whit in, curling up behind him on his bottom bunk, running my hand along the string of pearls of his spine.  I feel such intense sadness about time passing, such a frantic need to grab hold of right now, and sometimes I can’t imagine how others don’t feel that.  How do you walk through a day without every single minute being shadowed by its own passing?  Whenever I kiss my children goodnight my breath catches in my throat: they will never be this exact age again.  I can never have this moment back.  Ever.  Sometimes I find this poignancy of this absolutely unbearable.

As I lay next to Whit I looked around the yellow-walled room.  It’s such a cliche, but so powerfully true: I can close my eyes and be back in this same room, rocking infant Grace to sleep in the rocker, wondering when she will ever stop crying.  This third floor room under the roof with the slanting ceilings holds so many memories.  Its carpet has absorbed buckets of my tears as I cried wondering if I could do this.  Its walls have absorbed my wails as well as those of both of my children, and the same lullabyes over and over for almost eight straight years.  This is the room in which I became a mother.

And Trintje, you were by my side as I made that perilous passage.  You were there cheering me on when I feared I might not make it across.  Remember these two?  They were there with us.  We were four in a boat.  And it was turbulent, and I was seasick.  But you know what?  I’d go back every single time.  Every time.  Thanks for seeing me across.