I got you babe

The other day, my friend Karen posted to celebrate her 16th wedding anniversary. I commented, "hey, I remember that wedding!"  

It was an extraordinarily beautiful wedding. It was held at an art museum in Memphis, the huppah was made of roses, and everyone was feeling the love and having a wonderful time.

As the maid of honor, it was my responsibility to make sure Karen's wedding gown was properly bustled.  Her dress had a series of ribbons on the underside of the train and we were having a hard time getting all the ties matched up. 

Finally, I just got down on the floor and crawled under her skirt. 

People laughed, and it was funny, but I didn't give it a second thought. She was my girl, and it needed to be done. It's what women do for each other.

Two of my closest friends and I have a WhatsApp conversation that we've been maintaining for about 10 months or so, which is a continuation of Facebook and text conversations that we've had for a while before that, which is essentially a continuation of conversations we've been having, off and on, for 31 years.

We are in different time zones and different countries, meaning that we have become used to a dialogue with something of a stop and start quality. Sometimes we type, more often we exchange recorded messages. Because I am in the most westerly time zone, there are mornings I wake up and there are 20 recorded messages I have to catch up on. 

Two of us are divorced and are sharing the experience of being a single woman dating in her 40s. Today's messages, for example, focused on my rants that can be summed up thusly: "MEN OF EARTH! BEHAVE LIKE APPROPRIATE EDUCATED HUMAN BEINGS! SHOW SOME RESPECT AND LEARN THE PROPER ORDER OF OPERATIONS FOR DATING!!"*

Sometimes the messages are funny, somethings they're vent-y, sometimes they're shockingly intimate (the statement, "well, at least he didn't have erectile dysfunction" was uttered on at least one occasion).

Sometimes they're either cries for or expressions of help and support. In fact, often they're cries for or expressions of help and support. 

Sometimes if one of us is going on a date with a new guy, the other two stand by on Mass Murder Watch to make sure she's safe.

And we are there for each other, totally. We have 31 years of knowing each other's back stories, of understanding, of familiarity. We have 31 years of having Been Through Some Shit, so we have more wisdom and maturity and strength both to offer each other, and to endure what life brings. I would trust these women with absolutely anything.

Many of my relationships with my women friends are like this. I don't know if it's a function of age and maturity, learning how to support and accept each other more fully than we've ever been either able or inclined to do. It could be a function of getting back what you put out into the universe - be a good friend, cultivate good friendships, and when you need your posse, it'll be there.  

If you're in a funk and you need an impromptu night out and a wing-woman, you're covered. 

If you need help indulging in your fantasy about where to hide the body, you're covered. 

If you need someone to listen and sympathize while you cry, you're covered.

If you need me to get up under your dress on your wedding day, you're covered.

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*Similar, I imagine, to the order of operations for math, or the reason you're always getting those math memes wrong on Facebook. To clarify, meeting and having a conversation in person comes before declarations of love via text message.

Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair

My walks to work started three years ago, a month after Emma's death, as a respite from sorrow. To have a regular activity that anchored me in the physical world and took me out of my head a little bit. The daily #walktowork pictures evolved shortly thereafter - it forced me to seek out the beautiful, the interesting, the weird, the funny. It helped me heal, or at least helped the scar tissue develop.

I would do that walk in the rain, and when it was -5 degrees and blowing snow, and when there was dirty slush from a snowstorm 3 days ago. I loved it. I needed it. 

Sometimes I would go down 12th Avenue and walk through Cheesman Park and admire the gardens in peoples' yards.

More often I would walk down Colfax, past the Fillmore and Ogden theaters, past the sex shops and tattoo parlors and marijuana dispensaries. 

Past the 7-Eleven where that crazy-ass lady was friends with the police dispatcher. Past the beautiful gold dome of the state capitol building. 

 Past urban art and urban poetry and blood on the streets.

Yes, that really is a big puddle of blood on the sidewalk, as long as a manhole cover.

And then I got a new job that is 25 miles south of my house. No more walks to work. No more gritty city. No more #dailydenver pictures. 

To be clear, I love my new job. Absolutely love it. But my office is out in the 'burbs and I have to drive. At least it's a counter-commute. 

Still, it's 40 minutes. I rationalize it that it used to take me 40 minutes to walk to work before, so it's the same amount of time commuting. It's not the same commute, though.

I am getting used to it.

I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks, which I'm really enjoying. I listened to some when I walked, but I found I had a harder time concentrating on the story than when I'm in the car.

I've been practicing my Italian in preparation for the trip the kids and I are going on in two weeks. If you need someone to say, in Italian, "this is creamy cod, a typical northern Italian dish," I'm your girl.

I drive through some beautiful scenery - wide open plains underneath wide open skies.

I am, by nature, an optimist. I don't know how to view the world from a place of negativity. So I am learning to like the drive. The routine of it. The views. 

It's not quite the romanticism of the open road, but it has its own charm. I don't mind it at all.