A Girlfriends' Guide to Gratitude
I am a terrible packer. It’s not that I forget one important item, like a toothbrush, but instead, I forget a whole category of things. Once I packed for a four-day trip to Paris and took seven hats, eleven pairs of shoes, but no tops. Tops! As in the only shirt I packed for Paris was the one I wore to fly there. And yes, apparently Paris has loads of tops but that’s not the point. The point is who forgets a whole category??!!! The answer is me. Every time. And the answer to why I took seven hats is that I do not know.
So I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise when on a recent overnight girls’ trip to Margate, New Jersey, I forgot all my medication. Frustrated and annoyed, I texted my girlfriends, “Ugh. On way but forgot all my meds.”
“Whatcha need, mama?” was the first reply.
“Bet I can spot you, girl.” came the next.
Instantly, I was hooked up with two statins, a progesterone tablet and an estrogen patch. Not to mention a few recreational gummies and a wide assortment of mood stabilizers, sleeping aids and laxatives. My girlfriends had everything I needed. I shouldn’t have been surprised: They always do. Without them, I’d be lost. And without estrogen, I’d be fully mustached in about an hour.
These blessed hormone patch purveyors are the same sweet angels who pick spinach from my teeth with their fingernails without even asking, who share honest (and usually unspoken) challenges of parenting, laugh at my jokes and my foot-in-mouth stories - there’s a lot of the latter - and listen fully as I tell them the same story for the 100th time. They are my brain trust, my guard rails, my ministers, rabbis, gurus, fashion police, secret-keepers, plastic surgery advisory board and peerless cheering squad.
As I’ve gotten older it seems that no topic is off-limits and no truth goes unsaid, however hard it might be to hear. My friends tell it to me down and dirty. And I, in turn, have learned to do the same. As in,
That dress is hideous. And you do look fat.
No, you’re wrong. So go home and say you’re sorry.
I bought you a Panasonic Face Shaver. But what you really need is an estrogen patch.
Yes, it will be hard. But you’re better off without him.
Whatever the subject, we don’t hold back – we serve our thoughts straight up and strong. Feminine fidelity is a dance we all know the steps to; a choreography committed to memory, flowing in a comforting rhythym. A trust fall into the mosh pit? No problem. We’ll catch you. Girlfriends carry friends’ emotional loads like they are their own. Men might help each other move. But women help women move on.
In my college years, after someone had a bad boyfriend breakup, our girl gang would take the jilted party to the supermarket, plop her in a shopping cart, and wheel directly to the cookie and candy aisle, filling the cart with every bad-for-you item, an accompaniment to eat with her feelings. A swing over to the ice cream section, a whip around to the drink mixers, and back home we’d go to a pre-loaded VCR cued up to Beaches. Yes, Beaches. Because when you’re already despondent, you need a plot with an unexpected terminal cancer diagnosis. And when you’re impossibly sad, nothing heals better than sucking Cheez Whiz directly from the can with your best inebriated girlfriends who have swiftly and ever-so-deftly changed positions to detest that scoundrel ex-boyfriend. As the saying goes: If you love him, we love him. But if you hate him, well…watch out, fella.
The women friends in my life have held my hand, my bag, my beer, my hair (after too much beer) and my secrets. And they have always wanted what is best for me. I once had a terrible boyfriend named Steve. I would find other women’s jewelry and makeup in his apartment bathroom all the time. I mean, like, all the time. I’d confront him and he’d tell me that it was his housekeeper’s or that a colleague had stopped by, blah blah blah. Each time I’d run his excuses by my girlfriends who would invariably tell me that he was a cheater and a dog and that I deserved better. Still, I stayed with him. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I was worried about being alone, or secretly glad for all the free makeup. When I finally broke up with him, I was scared to admit to my friends that they’d been right all along. After I bashfully shared the news, they cheered with glee, clinked their cocktails, and agreed that they had been right all along – not focusing on him being a dog — but only that I deserved better. I never dated a guy again that my girls didn’t like. Scratch that: That my girls didn't love! And if you’re reading this Steve, I slept with your brother. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was the housekeeper.
So thanks to whatever higher power, or incredible luck, brought me to the fabulous women in my life, these well-wishers, these lionesses, this incomparable support system sorority. See you all at the usual time at the place where we ordered that thing, okay? Plan on spending some time. Lots to unpack.
