Abundance

Yesterday was Shanna's birthday. Shanna was my best friend in fifth and sixth grade. She was skinny and blond, which clearly denoted her superiority over me. She had a Nintendo in her room and often accused me of being friends with her just so I could play Super Mario. (This wasn't true. I was friends with her because I could go over to her house before school started and use the hairspray that was verboten in my own house.) She had Debbie Gibson lip gloss and a corkscrew curling iron and together we developed the perfect waterfall bangs (I practiced on her because I had short little girl bangs and a 'flop' is rather difficult to achieve when your mother tells you you are too young for hairspray.) We listened to her New Kids tapes and rode our bikes and we liked the same boys. Those boys always liked her back, while I got stuck with the fourth grader who put a stuffed animal in my locker and declared his undying love on the playground. (FOURTH GRADE. Even I thought that was ridiculous.)

It was Shanna's birthday yesterday. I remember this, even though I haven't seen her since the New Year's Eve we were thirteen and stuffing grapes in our mouths at a family friend's house in Spain.

I'm sort of pathetic in this way. I remember phone numbers and middle names and important days for people I haven't seen in years. I have always always wondered what it would be like to keep people. To have them around until I am one hundred years old. My grandmother still calls her best friend from high school on Sunday nights. I think they watch baseball games together on the telephone. I think this is precious.

So last year, when Fellow Bridesmaid started talking about this book she was reading, and how we should get a group of people to do the Examen every year like the people in the book, I was all, "I AM SO IN." I kind of forgot about the 'retreat' aspect of it and concentrated on the "I'll have friends forever and ever and call them George" part. (Not that I don't like retreats. Retreats are lovely. I just don't like the part where I have to talk about myself. I mean, I love talking about myself. Who doesn't? But not at a retreat. Ick.)

We met together for the first time over Labor Day last year at my new house. Fellow Bridesmaid, a professional retreat leader, organized everything. I just had to have clean dishes. We were four couples in newish interracial marriages, we knew each other from school, we were in the same-ish stage of life, and we committed to doing this every year. EVERY. YEAR.

Our second retreat was this past weekend. We named it Emmaus (or Emmaus Amadeus, sung to the tune of 'Rock Me Amadeus', which was Neighbor's Husband's contribution and sometimes it's just better to humor him.) We ate twice as much food as we would normally do on an average weekend. We talked. We prayed. We went shopping and played board games and some of us decided that Guitar Hero is enough of a reason to let one's husband buy a PlayStation even though he already has an Xbox and a mountain of PC games. (I can rock 'More Than A Feeling', Internet.)

I have always been a Best Friend in search of the other half of my cheap broken friendship heart necklace. I've had a handful of best friends, and every time I usurped one to make another, I felt tremendously guilty. I don't let go of people easily, even if I haven't seen them in years and most likely won't see them again. Getting married completely revamped my concept of Best Friendship, of course. Now my best friend is a BOY. He doesn't want to go see dancing movies with me or eat ice cream or paint his toenails. He especially doesn't like to stay up all night talking about boys, but he's still the best friend I've ever had. Awww. And when you're married, couple friends are important. It is really super lame to hang out with another couple when you only enjoy half of them. Friends! So necessary! So hard to find!

Except, for Phillip and me, they just haven't been hard to find. How lucky are we? Like, WAY LUCKY. I was friendless for a while. I hated entire years of high school. I hated my freshman year of college. I've been lonely and sad and cursing the universe for making me an introverted introspective Grade A dork. But for whatever reason, at this point in our lives we are blessed with amazing wonderful friends. The kind of friends who drop by for no reason, who come over once a week to watch TV, who kick off the week with a glass of wine on Sunday night, the kind who know they can call you if their plumbing mysteriously breaks in the middle of the night and they need to take a shower. Friends who call you "Aunt Maggie" when they hand you their new baby.

I seriously spent my entire sophomore year of high school praying for a friend, just one person who would understand me and have fun with me. Twelve years later I feel like that prayer is still being answered. And whenever I've had friends disappear, I've been given more. I've tried to stop labeling Best Friends, as I am too old to keep a diary with a lock and squirt Jean Nate on my neck before I leave for school. I've tried not to think about how many friends we have or how close we are or who we might be friends with next. We did our retreat stuff this weekend, but we also just reveled in being friends. Friends who talk about next year and the year after. And I can't tell you how awesome it is to leave your husband behind with his board game nerd buddies and go to the mall with their wives and your credit card, knowing that you're ALL having a blast.

Comments

[Christina/Mrs Broccoli Guy]

Wow, can I relate... to remembering old friends' birthdays, the best friend label that I keep using even though I'm waaay too old for that and everything. But I envy all your couple-y friends. So far we've only found one other couple that both of us really like hanging out with... it's harder than I expected it to be!