Those Kind of Friends
Posted on March 24, 2008
Filed Under marriage, milestones, holiday fun, Anxiety, friendship |
I am an Easter failure. I didn’t plan an egg hunt, there were no bunnies or chicks, no collared shirts or little girl dresses. Hell, we didn’t even color eggs this year. I boiled and chilled a dozen. I purchased food coloring and vinegar. But when it became time to dip the eggs, I felt the powerful urge to retreat to the bedroom for a nap. “We’ll do it later, kids,” I promised. The hours slipped away. We never got around to it.
Last year we hosted Easter lunch for our dear friends the Q’s. Even though our O was sick with the throw up bug, our kind, devoted friends agreed to come to our home, tainted with illness. We hid plastic eggs in the mud and ate quiche and too much chocolate. We drank Mimosas at noon. Poor O stayed quarantined up in his bedroom but, still, the Q’s contracted the throw up bug twenty four hours later. They spent days and days vomiting up their insides into rinse-able receptacles, their penance for having agreed to be with us on Easter. They are that good, they are those kind of friends.
Sadly the Q’s moved to the West Coast last summer and the various friends and family members we could have drafted to take their place all had plans elsewhere. So it was the four of us and too much ham and a decidedly mournful meal through which we scolded the children about their table manners and picked distractedly at the food growing cold on our untouched plates.
I drank too much on both Friday and Saturday nights, willful self medication that made the three day weekend even harder to endure. Still windy, still cold, I longed to be alone with my iPod. But I have two children and husband who expected some measure of my presence. It was inexplicably difficult to give them that. I was remote and distracted. My Better Half called my state of mind short fused when he wasn’t calling it something else, something less subtle and understanding.
The high point of the weekend was Friday night when I met my high school/college BFF for drinks and dinner to celebrate her 35th birthday. (She happens to be in Boston on business for a week or two.) It was like old times, only sadder. Her mother is very ill and my BFF wrestles with the attendant grief and guilt. She is obligated to finish the professional project she is working on while feeling, acutely, the draw of an aging and frail parent that needs her -badly.
She and her husband are struggling with fertility issues. They want a baby. They want their baby to be the culmination of a love that is easy and free. A roll in the hay, a hastily purchased home pregnancy test, tears of joy and anticipation. They deserve that simple outcome and still it won’t happen for them. It will not be easy like that. Now they speak gravely about donors and the possibility of adoption. They wring their hands and hold their tongues, secretly, fervently hoping that something will change. And soon.
I spoke of my recent worries, mere tribulations in the wake of her angst, but regardless, she listened. She listened to me tell about my writing, my doubt, the financial black hole that is this house, the demands that having children and a mortgage make on a marriage, a partnership. It is the stuff of middle age - this. And how did we get here? She and I wondered aloud. Mid-thirties. Another year. Another crisis.
Thank God for old friends who can hold hands, tightly, with meaning and say (when it matters most), “I understand and no matter what…I’ll always love you.”
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