Savvy 15: My Mother's Friends

On Mother's day, I decided to take stock of my mother’s gifts. Not those gifts. I exchanged the sweater with Dalmation puppies stitched into the sleeves for a sensible pair of sandals at Talbots long ago. Believe me, I don’t even want to talk about the Hess Truck I got for Christmas this year.
I mean, the lasting gifts, the things she handed down along with crooked front teeth, head to foot moles, and a temper that could light a fire in a rain storm. Along with all those treasures, my mother gave me friends. The keep-able kind.
Growing up, I wasn’t particularly aware of this gift. I didn’t think, as I tip-toed through the dining room while my mother and the women from the neighborhood clinked their tea cups against their saucers and ignored their children, “This is a lesson about making friends.” I didn’t consider my mother’s trips to visit friends from her days as a camper or college student vital diplomatic ventures, and I didn’t connect those visits to her increased resilience.
I didn’t give a second thought to the reality that I had not one woman cheering me on at field hockey games and tennis matches but a whole band of slightly ill-behaved Kelly green-clad women whooping and hollering at the least provocation. These women held each other’s hands when the unthinkable visited their lives, and they celebrated the success of any one of us as if it was their own.
Not to mention the one who does think of me as her own. My mother claims it wasn’t a real contract, that she was just at the end of her tether and didn’t actually intend to sell me. But OM says she could have bargained my mother down to ten cents for her 5th child. She didn’t. She paid a quarter. OM says she always wanted a daughter, and she’s keeping me. I imagine they laughed about it in the grocery store back then, as tantrum-infested little me screamed. They laugh about it now. For all I know, OM’s goofy offer and steadfast friendship during those years saved my whiny oopsy-we’ve-got-another-one-dear ass. And yet, until recently, I didn’t think of any of that as a gift.
But now I do. For two reasons. The first is that those women who came to all those games and meets are rallying around my mother again. They are taking her for walks after she gets home from visiting my father in the nursing home. They are bringing meals and sitting with her while she adds a stitch of meat to her fragile bones. They are calling. They are showing up. And because of them, my mother is okay. Because of them, it matters a little less that all five of us are far away. That one of us is never coming back.
My mother’s bones are fragile but her friends are fierce. They are walking in the woods as I write this, my mother’s band of octogenarians. They are crossing streams in their running shoes. They are shouting at their dogs, and muttering about a memory of balance. They are mocking their husbands. Sometimes gently. My mother is not alone.
And though I have moved, I am not alone either. I can’t help but take stock of my friendships. My mother taught me this. She taught me by example that friends matter, that they need to be nurtured, that they trump boyfriends and compliment husbands, and should not be supplanted by children. Already, my daughters know this. They lie in wait for my friends to visit. My daughter Anna calls Moon to tell her about the school play, and Em can’t wait for Lisa to come, so that she can tell her how she really feels about school these days. Soon, Anna’s godmother will visit. I wait, almost patiently, for my dear friends to visit or call from Maine, Chicago, and New York. History repeats itself, as my daughters form loving relationships with the friends who have supported me and made me whole since I was a child, just as they begin to forge their own.
Many of my friends are mothers, but not all. They are not all women. Very few of them live near me now. Nevertheless, they are the people who make my life whole. They make me laugh. They allow that I am insane, yes. But not alone. They are my blessing. They are my sisters, two by blood, the others by love. They make it possible for me to be a mother the way nourishment allows me to function.
Necessary as air. More fun than Oxygen.
One day, will they walk with me? In their woods or mine. In walking shoes or boots. Balance may be a memory. But friendship will be right there with us.