I just read The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship. I can’t say that I have friendships that have lasted that long. There are certainly people I have cared about and thought about for much of my 43 years, but I have no friendships that have sustained all those years. I’ve moved a lot and went to three high schools in four years. My parents haven’t lived in the town I grew up in since I left for college, leaving me without a sense of “home.” Mac Daddy and I have lived in four cities in the 14 years we’ve been together. We are slightly plagued by wanderlust, yet feel a paradoxical nudge to plant roots too.
Facebook has brought many of my old friends back into my life. In fact, I went back to my hometown a few weeks ago and met a childhood friend for coffee. We met on the school bus the very first day of sixth grade and became fast friends. We bopped between our two houses every afternoon and wiled away our youth listening to records, painting our nails, and gabbing about boys and clothes and school. I was ten-years old when we met. We lost touch along the way (chalk it up to all those high schools). I hadn’t seen her in years until we ran into each other on Main Street one afternoon when I was in college. We chatted and went on our way. We had become friends before we had boobs or ever kissed a boy. We were girls who memorized all the words to Prince songs and made up dance routines to perform in her family room. We hadn’t been on a date or bought tampons or cried over a broken heart.
But 28 years later, we had.
We met for coffee as grown women who had last seen each other as girls. In fact, we are now older than our mothers were when we last saw each other. You do the math. It was as if no time passed. We embraced like long lost sisters and needed more than a java break to squeeze in our gabbing. Oddly enough, we didn’t spend our time “catching up.” We actually talked. We talked about politics and marriage and kids and family. There was no superficial chitchat or decades old emotional varnish to chip through. It was natural. It was easy. It was fun.
We had grown up but not grown apart.
I’m not letting another 28 years pass before I see her again.
This one reunion has made me reevaluate my friendships. There are lots of women I adore. There are women who catch me when I fall and figuratively slap me when I need to settle down. They protect me and keep me in check. My friends cry my tears and celebrate my victories. While I don’t have friendships like the girls from Ames, I do feel blessed to have a posse of smart, passionate, generous, funny women to count as friends.
I’d like to sweep them all away to a poolside haven where we could get drunk on giddiness. I would toast my pals with one of these girly pink drinks, coined by happenstance by my friend Gina:
Trouble & Fun
4 ounces Cava
1/2 ounce Cointreau
2 ounces Nuvo sparkling liqueur
Orange slice
Pour cava into champagne glass. Add Cointreau and Nuvo. Plop in a thin orange slice. Sip, squeal, hug, repeat.