Well hello again. Did you miss me? Or maybe you didn’t notice I was even away. That’s okay, too. I’ve been known to not notice that my husband got a haircut for days on end, so who am I to judge?
I spent a few days at the beach with some of my dearest girlfriends. For awhile there, the entire trip looked like it was in jeopardy of falling apart. Two out of the five of us couldn’t go this year. I opted out last year, as we were just moving, but I decided come hell or high water I would be there. And so the three of us found a way to make it happen.
I find it amazing that in some way, shape or form, the five of us have been getting away together every year since 2007. We started out as women thrown together by the simple fact that we were first-time mothers, living in the same neighborhood, wondering what the hell we’d gotten ourselves into. We saw each other multiple times a week, whenever we were desperate for something to do and another adult to talk to.
By the time the children were 4, none of us lived in the neighborhood anymore. Some of us didn’t even live in the same state. Today our kids would barely recognize each other. They got us started, but our friendship is the glue that holds us together despite the miles apart. We don’t really talk much during the year. A text or a call on your birthday, an email or a Facebook message here and there. We don’t have to. I know that if I really need something, I can call any of them and they’ll drop everything to help. And when we find each other again in person every spring, we slip back into conversations as easily as we slide into our flip-flops.
Everyone needs the kind of friends you can do this with. The kind of friends that don’t need constant maintenance to know that everything’s okay. The kind of friends that can lie on the beach together and talk for hours or be content to sit side by side in blessed silence. It doesn’t matter if you’re vacationing together or hanging out at the park a mile from your house. You need a few good girlfriends like this.
I have other groups of friends that always talk about getting away together, but we’ve never made it happen. Perhaps because we see each other often enough, the urgency isn’t there. I do wonder if we stopped meeting up every year, what would happen to us? Would we drift apart, just as our kids did? After seven years, though, I don’t think we would let it happen. We may be bound together loosely, but we are bound together nonetheless. We’re proof that friendships don’t have to be conventional to work. And for that, I raise my styrofoam daiquiri cup in a toast to girlfriends of all kinds, in every corner of the world.
