Last night I found myself in the company of a group of women I hadn’t seen for two years. Most of them could say the same. The common thread among us is our individual friendship with the evening’s hostess, whose wedding we all attended this time of year in 2007. In two short years, The Bride’s marriage painfully disintegrated, the result of her new husband’s spiral back into the drug addiction he battled much of his life. She is now in the midst of a divorce from a man she no longer knows. I call them two short years, but in her reality they have been endless.
Her phone call last week invited me to a potluck on Saturday night with the women who arranged and attended her bridal shower, the friends she feels closest to. Eight of us were present, and the moment each woman entered the room I remembered how much I liked every single one of them. Separate catch-ups while we filled our plates revealed the happenings since we all toasted The Bride at the shower where many of us had first met. All women in our late forties to mid-fifties, the past two years held everything from hot flashes to hot romance; cold disappointment to sweet success.
We pulled chairs into a half circle facing the sofa and talked and ate, simultaneously ignoring and acknowledging the packed boxes stacked around us. The Bride can no longer afford the large apartment she insisted her husband leave, and is awaiting word on whether she’ll be let out of her lease. But she has a new job she loves and two supportive grown sons she’s close to, so with a little help from her friends and time to heal, she knows she’ll come out strong on the other side.
These were all strong women in the room that night: a public school principal, a vice-principal, a social worker, a finance administrator, an educational consultant, a member of law enforcement, and those involved in sales, volunteer work, schoolwork, even blogging. Discussion of personal matters revealed there were two stable relationships among those present: me and Husband, and the drop-dead fabulous lesbian couple who referred to each other as Wife and were currently house hunting. But that night was just a snapshot in time. So many things could be different tomorrow.
What won’t ever change is the strength women draw from each other, even after the passage of time with no contact and the eternal shifting of events. When the men sailed away in ships, or marched off to war, or disappeared entirely for reasons too varied to consider, the women pulled their chairs into a circle to figure it out and decide what to do. One thing was as certain then as it is now: they would never have to do it alone.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos make us Look Twice
the dutch have landed again
fancy yoga
storefronts on rooftops
twisted heads
rust and vines
bus to atlantic city