I just finished reading Kelly Corrigan's The Middle Place this morning, a memoir about the middle place where being a mother and being a daughter overlap. At the end she includes this fabulous essay on the transcendence of women's friendships. As luck would have it, I found a video of her reading it aloud and had to share {hanky warning--but it's worth the 5 minutes}:
I can't help but think of my grandmother and her 8 sisters, my mom and her 4 sisters, my mom and her long-standing group of friends who have seen each other through...well...everything.
I, too, have one of those milestone birthdays coming up this year. I have been lucky to have some really incredible women to call dear friends. But I've moved a lot. And so have my friends. I have to admit I've felt a little forlorn and lonely lately, since most of those close friendships--formed in my own growing up years, or at the playground, in play groups and babysitting groups with my children--are now far away.
Somehow I find myself in this other, "middle place" where the demographics of my neighborhood, church congregation, and school make me the outsider, the other. I'm at an awkward age for new friendships, like a 14-year-old in kindergarten. I'm not young enough to be included and invited on the get-togethers with the young moms or grad students (and I realize they consider me practically ancient, with a 15-year-old and all) and most of the women my age in town have lived here forever and already have their go-to people long established, including extended family, those luckies.
So I'm left with a long Christmas card list of long-distance-yet-close connections, people who would step in, give me a hug, recommend a doctor/hairstylist/parenting tip, watch my kids, and vice versa, if only we lived closer. These relationships transcend distance, except when they don't. When I just want to go to a movie with a girl friend who really gets me.
So this is for the group of women who don't even know each other--my posse of lifelong "Pigeons" who I'm sure would love each other if ever we got in one big room:
Shelly~Debbie~Sue~JenA~Kelly~JenW~Trina~Christin~
JenJ~Deirdre~Christie~Jessica
{plus a few more iFriends whose friendships
sustain me although we've never really met}
I would totally jump on a red-eye flight and fly anywhere for any one of you. Looking at that list, I realize I really don't have anything to complain about. I'm blessed to know each of you. But the world's on notice: I've got my eye out for some new Pigeons...come out, come out, wherever you are.
