Last weekend, my cell rang.\u00a0 It was my friend Michele, back here for a visit from the East Coast.\u00a0 \u201cI can\u2019t talk long,\u201d I explained.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m over at Amy\u2019s for dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh!\u00a0 Say hi for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Standing in Amy\u2019s kitchen in Berkeley, I realized this was a conversation Michele and I could have had more than four decades ago, had there been cell phones. \u00a0I\u2019ve known these two women since we all started junior high.\u00a0 While I\u2019ve had periods of being more or less close to them depending on geography, life circumstances and our kids\u2019 ages, it\u2019s always easy to pick up where we left off.<\/p>\n
Michele can still get me laughing with her imitation of our 7th<\/sup> grade math teacher, who bore a striking resemblance to a woodchuck and had the compulsive habit of wagging his chin back and forth while loosening his tie, as if in desperation to break free.<\/p>\n And Amy and I still descend into horrified giggles about the time she mistakenly interpreted an 8th<\/sup> grade boy\u2019s invitation\u2014\u201cDo you want to go to the school dance?\u201d\u2014as a theoretical question posed to gauge her hipness.\u00a0 \u201cEeew, no!\u201d she responded.<\/p>\n Besides being funny, smart, generous, reliable, loyal and insightful, Amy and Michele are uniquely orienting in my life.\u00a0 They\u2019ve borne witness to my family struggles in a way that actual family cannot.<\/p>\n Hey Lis<\/em>, Amy wrote to me in an e-mail a couple of months ago.\u00a0 I read your blog and enjoyed it very much.\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t that your mother\u2019s phrase (\u201cI\u2019m not impressed\u201d)?<\/em><\/p>\n Ouch, I\u2019d forgotten that particular manifestation of my mom\u2019s relentless fault-finding.<\/p>\n Amy recently mentioned her shock one particular evening during our teen years, when my mother almost gleefully described her dislike and contempt for one of her own daughters (my sister).<\/p>\n I wish I could say this incident was aberrant.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t. \u00a0And as painful as it is to recall such reckless cruelty, Amy\u2019s description was validating as only an outsider’s reminder can be:\u00a0 yes, this is what happened in my house; no, it wasn\u2019t irrational adolescent rebelliousness that made me enraged at my mother in those years.<\/p>\n Michele, for her part, has challenged the black-and-white thinking that informed my childhood and that sometimes creeps into my current mindset.\u00a0 Recently I got mad at her over what I perceived as inadequate support.\u00a0 I told her that the interaction reminded me of the worst of my family history\u2014history she knew\u2014and indicated that despite her apologies, I was ready to end the friendship.<\/p>\n You know how friends are great because they really listen to you?\u00a0 Well, sometimes they\u2019re great because they don\u2019t.\u00a0 Having apologized yet again for her part of the problem, Michele did something I\u2019ve never experienced.\u00a0 She ignored my air of finality with loving detachment, and quietly, confidently, kept trying until I realized I was over it.<\/p>\n Amy and Michele are not family.\u00a0 And that\u2019s part of what makes them so dear to me.<\/p>\n Published in the Piedmont Post<\/em>, April 14, 2010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last weekend, my cell rang.\u00a0 It was my friend Michele, back here for a visit from the East Coast.\u00a0 \u201cI can\u2019t talk long,\u201d I explained.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m over at Amy\u2019s for dinner.\u201d \u201cOh!\u00a0 Say hi for me.\u201d Standing in Amy\u2019s kitchen in Berkeley, I realized this was a conversation Michele and I could have had more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n