I don't often write about eventful weekends of my own in current day, but I have these three friends who came to visit me last weekend with their husbands, and it was so memorable I can barely focus on anything else. There's nothing like a childhood-friend reunion to remind you of everything you said, did and wore to everything you attended from age 7 on. It was like my memory was jump-started by conversation, laughter and wine. After they left, I remembered where I left my phone charger six months ago and how to diagram a sentence. It was a Halloween miracle.
I consider these three friends - Barb, Diane and Lisa - to be one of my life's greatest blessings. I think it's rare when you're 57 years old and you're still friends with the girls you wet the bed with.
Like everyone else, I had different groups of friends before I became an adult. And like most female friendships, there were a lot of crossovers, merges and acquisitions, and spin-offs. Girl friendships are like a constantly morphing amoeba that swallows up lonely pieces of bacteria and brings them into the fold, and then when it gets too big, a chunk will break off and become its own life form, taking some of the friends with it. I don't know if girls are like this now, but in the '60s and '70s, a girl could belong to any number of different cliques at one time and still be a good, loyal friend. Unless you were a catty bitch and then you were holding on by a thread and would inevitably be pushed off the edge by the women at the 10-year reunion. You might look fabulous, but you'd be in a freefall into the ravine, no question about it.
I had early childhood friends in the neighborhood to which I was bound together by simple geography in that I was allowed to go to their houses and play from dawn until dusk if I was careful to look both ways before crossing the street. We were allowed to go anywhere in the vicinity as long as we could hear Mr. Balestrino whistle for his six kids. If you were out of range of that panic-inducing sound, you were too far away. Like up on Jackson or something.
Then I had friends in middle school whom I was attached to like a magnetized black hole of low self-esteem that only tweens can withstand. I had another set of friends in high school; we shared interests, personality types and the same rung on the popularity ladder.
These three friends of mine cut through all those tiers. Diane lived across the street from me and I've known her so long, I can't remember meeting her. Our friendship is so solid, it weathered the middle school search for friends in a cooler league than our own, and even the high school pigeonholing in which she was a majorette and Junior Miss pageant princess and I was a nerdy class president. By our senior year of high school, we had yet to be in the same class assignment and we ran with different crowds, but we still called each other almost every night and compared notes.
I met Lisa at Brownie day camp, where we learned the Mexican Hat Dance together, but I didn't become close friends with her until middle school. Our mothers both worked at our school, so we shared that special blend of embarrassment and relief that if we forgot our lunch money we didn't have to wash cafeteria trays.
Barb was in my kindergarten class and also Brownie troop, although at day camp, she was put into the group that got Japan. We Mexicans hated them all and stood silently around the circle in our manly bolero jackets (our names in glitter on the back didn't help to snazz them up much at all), watching Barb and the other geishas tiptoe around in their classy little black satin slippers and kimonos. By high school Barb was one of the smartest people in our class, so we forgave her for the day camp uppity Japanese sophistication. She and I shared geeky Honors English pranks. And, yes, for those of you who don't know, the geeks may have appeared nervous and avoiding conflict and eye contact, but we were secretly having more fun than the football players and cheerleaders. Trust me on this.
Small towns have a way of binding people together more tightly than anyone you connect with after you grow up and leave town. I'm still joined at the hip with these three girls, but I'm also bound with some pretty strong duct tape to a whole bunch of people who I barely know anymore. Because we shared the growing-up-in-Hubbard experience, we could easily slip into some kind of Golden Girls roommate situation or vacation together and it would probably work out okay.
These three friends of mine, though . . . I could seriously go off, become addicted to bath salts and eat people under a bridge and they would find some reason to be supportive of my lifestyle decision. "You know, she did need to up her protein. I noticed the last time we got together, she was thin."
Barb, Diane, Lisa and I have been getting together regularly since we graduated from high school. We've been married seven times and we have seven kids among us. We share some bridesmaids dresses that kill. I just found out that Lisa gave her bridesmaid's dress from my wedding to Barb, who wore it for years. We've supported each other through bad perms, oversized shoulder pads, poor boyfriend choices, matching purses and headscarves, and some regrettable behavior at class reunions. More than once, a guy I was dating made a move on Diane. She immediately walked into her house, called me and said, "Dump that one."
We've lived far and wide, but nothing could keep us apart for very long. Not delayed flights, bad weather, sick babies, nor not being able to fit into anything decent. We've met and cavorted in our hometown in Ohio, in Manhattan, in Washington DC, in the mountains of Asheville, and most recently in San Francisco.
At these get-togethers, we've all taken a turn at having the flu, a stomach virus, a urinary tract infection, debilitating cramps, laryngitis, and hangovers from Jell-O shots in our school colors that kept us in bed. But none of that could keep us down for long. At one of the weddings, my husband, my six-week-old baby and I were all sick with a knock-down-drag-out flu in Charlotte. I took to my bed like a proper Southern belle but then rallied and was back at it for happy hour the next day.
In 2012, at a pre-class reunion gathering of the four friends, one of us was sick in bed until noon the day after we had all arrived. When we pressed her husband, he said, "I think it's a combination of the anticipation of this weekend and it finally coming true."
And that's quite a friendship.