Part 1: People
If anyone ever stands a chance of truly understanding me, they must know this. In my life, there has rarely been any difference between family and friends. My parents had me at about the same time as their friends had kids (or in the case of my friend Suzanne, on the exact same day). So all of us kids were raised together. We were dressed in the same outfits. We slept in the same cribs and beds. We even went on vacation en masse. We stayed at the beach, about six or seven families in two or three houses. A dozen adults. A few dozen kids. And yes, we enjoyed it. I didn’t really know there was any such thing as a family vacation that only involved only a nuclear family. To us kids, our parents were interchangeable. To the parents, their kids were interchangeable. Discipline, love, food, money, cars, siblings — all were shared. Although we didn’t live together, we may as well have. It was the closest thing you’d ever get to a hippie socialist commune in the conservative, Bible-belt South.
Thank God it’s never changed.
We’ve never grown out of it. That big group of parents are still friends. They still get together almost every Friday night. And us kids are still close. Though life has often flung us apart like scatter shot, we have clung to each other. Whether it’s a result of the sting of misery from some terrible shared experiences or the camaraderie forged by rarely being separated, something in us all is like a magnet, a compass. We feel, without knowing, that we can never be pulled apart. We are each other’s North Star.
This past weekend, I got to hang out with some of my family/friends (to me that’s kind of like sister/wife, in a non-creepy, non-religious way). We don’t all live in the same area, so getting together is all too often a rarity. But whenever I do spend time with them, it does my soul good. It’s cleansing. It’s reinvigorating. It’s validating. And at times, it’s hard. I can’t help but get into comparisons with those who are doing “better” than I am. And I can’t help but fall to pieces over the commingled pain I share with those who aren’t doing so well. Like it or not, I am attached to them, like Siamese twins. We may pretend we have separate lives as adults, but in reality, we are conjoined.
These women are my lifeblood. No matter what other friends I find in my life, I can’t imagine anyone else will love me as much as they do. I’d like to see someone try! For even more so than my own flesh-and-blood family, these sisters have taught me what unconditional love is. And for that, I will forever be thankful.
Some of my dearest friends and me in New Orleans. I think we look pretty good for a bunch of middle-aged broads!
