Sisters from another mother

Through Facebook, I renewed friendships with women that I had known for over 30 years at a time in my life that I had never been lower.  I was planning our high school reunion and used FB as a tool to keep classmates up to date on events planned for the weekend.  The reunion was planned for October 2009.  By then there was a core group of us that communicated regularly.  Some of us had been closer than others of us throughout life, and I had not been in touch with any of them over the past 30 years, but as a group we struck up a friendship.  It was a throwback to high school - funny, giggly, silly but also filled with wisdom, compassion and grown-up women issues of family, love and life.   In March, the reunion planning committee arranged a mini-reunion at a local restaurant/bar near our hometown.  Five of “the girls” (as we dubbed ourselves) showed.  Pam, Erin, DeeDee, Drury and Laura.  We moved from our Facebook friendship to something real that night.  Erin and her husband Jim owned a house on a lake in North Carolina.  She invited us all, including another classmate, Kelley, to come that summer for a ladies weekend at the lake. Miracle of miracles, we found a weekend that worked for us all.  I hadn’t been working but was lucky enough to have FF miles to use.  And so it was that the end of July, I boarded a flight to Charlotte.   Aside from the mini-reunion, I hadn’t seen Erin in 30 years.  We weren’t particularly close in high school - we rode the same bus our senior year and always sat next to each other and I always liked her but we ran in different groups.  Upon my arrival, I went outside to meet her - she drove up to the baggage claim in her mini-van and when she got out of the car, I knew her immediately.  She was as beautiful as I remembered, her smile was big and lit up her face.  We threw my suitcase in the car (Full disclosure - suitcases, plural! I admit that I ridiculously overpacked for a long weekend at the lake where all I needed was my bathing suit, shorts, t-shirts and flipflops) and we we off! The lake house was about 90 miles from the airport.  I remember the conversation like it was yesterday.  We talked about life and love - the men in our lives.  It would be the theme of the weekend. I shared with her the story of Charles’ illness and death from cancer and all the accompanying drama fostered by his ex-wife and the “prayer circle”.  She talked about her failed first marriage and we shared our individual dating nightmares - most of mine from online - she got lucky, she married her first online date and what would be the love of her life - Jim - end of story. Really,  how does that happen?!   We drove up to her house in the middle of God knows where - I’m a city girl, for heaven’s sake - when I got out of the car, all I could hear were crickets.  Thousands of them singing; a concerto of welcome.  It was loud and musical and yet calming and you could hear the quiet beauty of the lake underneath the song.  We ate potato salad, chicken salad and pasta salad that night.  We sat in the living room and I met Jim and we watched TV and I remember laughing at how many used car commercials we saw.  Later I got a tour of the dock.  A gorgeous bar with hammered aluminum, festive lights strung across; music hooked up, chairs, couches, a porch swing and the lake shining in the moonlight.  Behind me were steps up to the house.  Erin and I sat on the screened-in porch later and talked some more.  The crickets chimed in their opinion of our thoughts.  Happily tired, I retired to the guest room and claimed a top bunk on one of the two bunkbeds in the room. The next day the rest of the crew arrived - DeeDee - senior superlative winner of “best dressed” and “most talkative” as voted by her classmates, a fellow Drill Team member; Drury - beautiful, tiny, wisecracking Drury - the end of the Drill Team line; Laura, thin, lovely wisp of a woman aka the “saucy minx”  - the center of the Drill Team line; Kelley - loving, centered, athletic; and me - damaged but authentic, funny - center left on the Drill Team line.  Six women (and Jim) about to embark on a weekend of water, wine and whatever else was in store for us.   Everyone brought something.  The cars were loaded with food and liquor.  Cookies with mini Reese’s cups baked into them.  Turtle Chex mix that I became instantly addicted to.  Salads, chocolate.  Wine, Tanqueray, and beer.  Bottled water and diet coke for me.  I love when women get together and eat, really eat! We do, you know.  We graze through it all.  No thoughts or care to our waistline or who is watching or what anyone else thinks.  We fed more than our bellies that weekend.  We fed our souls. We ate unabashedly. And the lake!  The joys of the lake!  The pontoon boat, Captain Jim and his first mate, Miss Belle, their little dog that was without a doubt the belle of the ball - she sat in the co-skippers chair or marched up and down the length of the boat ensuring that we all knew who the alpha female was in this group!  There was a thunderstorm on Friday night.  We took a sunset/rain cruise. The sky was blackening with streaks and pockets of orange, magenta, red and pink.  Stars peeked in and out from behind the dark clouds and nightfall.  We marveled at the beauty and talked together or in little huddles of girls depending on where we sat on the boat or who we were next to.  We were in sweatshirts and shorts, our hair unstyled and dried with lakewater in it. No makeup.  No purses.  Our smiles the only accessories we wore.   We jet skied that weekend, Jim the master of making all water sports fun, scary and exhilarating, threw us back into our teenaged selves. We were all 16 years old again - squealing, laughing and screeching!  A few of us were brave enough to ride a huge tube behind the boat and held on for dear life as Jim made it his mission to terrorize us into peals of laughter.  DeeDee flew off the tube and hit her mouth on Drury’s head. On my turn, after hitting huge waves in the wake and bumping along at what felt like 100 miles an hour, I flew off backwards and as I slammed into the water, my bikini bottoms were ripped from my body; an upturned foot is all that kept the girls from having to haul my nude lower half back onto the boat (Thanks, God!).   We floated around the dock, paddling ridiculous rafts and tubes attached together in a line by hooking our feet over the edge of someone else’s float.  Laura manned the chain of silly girls about the lake with an unwieldy kayak oar.  Drinks were spilled.  One of us (okay, me) decided that it was perfectly logical to step 2 plus feet from the dock’s edge into a rubber raft. The ensuing spill into the lake was worthy of a America’s Home Video grand prize.  Too bad we didn’t capture it on film.  But it is all memorialized in my head.  Sitting on the dock in our pj’s every morning talking and drinking coffee.  The shrimp boil.  The “drunk dial” aka “DD” calls to the boys we liked in high school.  Sleeping in bunk beds in one room.  Laughing at our pictures in the yearbooks from high school.  Wondering where our other classmates had disappeared to.  Discussing the merit of any hairstyle that included “wings”.  Who we kissed.  Who we wanted to kiss.  Who we would secretly kiss today.  Trying on each others clothes. What would we wear to the reunion?  And always the silliness and the giggling. The giggling was the signpost marking the weekend I turned the corner in my healing. I was loved, safe and secure.  I was surrounded by a group of remarkable women who had each shouldered life’s burdens with grace and dignity.  These were women with children at home now - the same age we were when we met.  It didn’t seem possible that so much time had gone by - thirty years and still we were still the same girls inside but happier, braver, more loving and infinitely wiser and kinder. I felt the barrier I had put up against the pain of my life of the last five years break that weekend.  Surely as the pain, rage and fear bound me to the darkness, the weekend on the lake baptized me into my new life.  If I had been dressed in white and dunked in the water on the banks of the lake, I could not have been more reborn than I was that weekend.  I hope that these beautiful women know what they gave me that first weekend in August, what they brought me, how they helped me to let go of the past and trust in the love that only women can give each other.  I love you, ladies.