A Thought About Friendship (and Moms)

Last week I wrote a post about Best Friends. In it, I asked for stories from other people about what having good friends mean to them. When my extraordinary friend and writer, Shannon, said that she would put down some thoughts about this ever-important relationship in her life, I was thrilled. See her essay below and, if you’d like to read more about Shannon check out her blog.

As always, let's hear from you. I know ya'll must have a friend story you're dying to share!

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Friendship

by, Shannon Rigney

There are many qualities of my mother that I would like to emulate. She's funny as anything. She has good fashion sense. She makes a mean steak, and a great rice pilaf. I hope that one day my daughter looks forward to spending time with me as much as I do with my mom.

But, the quality of my mom's that I would most like to acquire is that she is a great friend. To see my mom with her closest friends is to watch a give-and-take of love, honesty, and humor. She treats her inner circle of friends like family. They're with each other forever. One way that my mom and her friends make sure that they stay glued so tightly is they carve out significant and regular time to be together. Mostly they have a glass of wine and some cheese, but they also cook together, go to movies, or just hang out. It doesn't matter what they are doing. They have a blast just because they are together. And all these shared moments and belly laughs do more than just pass the time in a happy way. All this love and time they devote to each other helps them weather difficulties.

Because there are bad times. My mom has been angry with her friends many times, and vice versa. But she never lets her feelings stew. She and her friends keep their connection real by telling each other straightaway when something gets under their skin. They practice a level of honesty that most people – myself included – aspire to but, like Zen mastery, probably won't achieve anytime soon.

I have lots to learn from my mother's attitude toward friendships – the way she holds them so dear, the way she prioritizes and makes time for them, and, mostly, the way she honors them with honesty. One thing that my mother had going for her when she was my age is that she lived in the suburbs amongst other women her age who had all made similar choices. They had all decided to have children and, mostly, stay home to raise them. My mom talks about many afternoons spent talking and laughing with her best friend while all of us kids ran around the yard.

Here in New York, I've got no yard, not a ton of free time, and no best friend with kids the same age as mine. In fact, few of the women whom I would call my best friends have any kids at all. And, of the women I know who do have children, most of us are working either part or full time. Scheduling even one afternoon together can be hard.

These minutes and hours with my friends are necessary to keep me balanced and happy. They remind me that I am more than a parent, more than a collection of work and dinner and bedtime rituals. They help me remember how to be light, how to be myself, how to laugh until I cry.

Those moments sustain me. Sometimes I feel like I am practically holding my breath until the next visit with a girlfriend supplies me with oxygen. I am trying to recreate with mere crumbs what my mom and her friends built with a full harvest. Time is the greatest commodity, the thing that most of us don't have (or at least don't have when we'd like to). And, yet, time is exactly what allowed my mom to build up the strong friendships that have carried her through the challenges of her life. For now, all I can do is do the best I can to spend time with the people who matter to me, the people who give me my air supply. And when I do have them with me, I'll enjoy every moment, breathing in enough to keep me going until the next time.

Have a Best Friend?

The other night I was out with a very good friend of mine to catch up and have a fabulous dinner (check out: Artisnal). In between consuming one of the best cheese plates I've ever had in my life - seriously - I had to stop the conversation a moment so that I could allow my taste buds to do a happy dance , I had the chance to catch up with a friend so busy that I mostly see her in blurs. After our dinner, I sat on the subway and thought about how important her friendship has been to me in my life. Okay, I also thought about the cheese, but mostly I thought about my friend.

I like to think of friendship as a living organism. One that shifts and changes, and grows and wanes as the years pass by. Some are finite but purposeful, some are life-long and everlasting and others, those rare others, are remarkable and breathtaking and make you wonder how you were so lucky in your life to have the opportunity to experience it. And yes, these friendships even have the power to overshadow a phenomenal block of cheese. Dare I say I've been lucky to have this last kind of friendship with a few people in my life. Their support, their honesty and their humor has contributed to the parts of myself that I like the most. Seeing one of these friends this weekend made me think about Best Laid Plans - how the series focuses so often on my dating relationships and not on some of the most significant relationships in my life: my friendships. I would ask: am I dating? Who am I dating? How can I meet people? Will I ever get married again? Will I die alone?

When you are out in the "single" world it sometimes feels like your personal life is public information in the way that a woman's pregnant belly becomes some kind of public touchable monument (pregnant ladies, start charging people a fee and start your newborn's college fund). Everywhere you go, people seem to want to know whether you're dating, who you're dating, what you're doing to meet people and so on. Your singlehood becomes a conversation piece: like a coffee table book. Everyone means well and there's very rarely malice behind it. However, like many of my single friends, I got totally caught up in that. So this weekend, as I sat across from my friend, it hit me, WHAM (much like a coffee table book slapping me in the face). I may have been single but I have some amazing friends around me. Why was I so worried about dying alone? In honor of the extraordinary relationship many of us know as best friends, I'd love to hear from you. Tell me your friendship story. It can be sappy, hilarious or simply honest. It's the type of relationship that we all have in common and I'd like to take a few posts to relish in it!

If I Were a Boy

The other night I was out at a bar listening to a band, and, after a few drinks, I was relaying some of my dating debacles to one of my guy friends. We hadn't hung out in a bit so he needed to be caught up on quite a few of my latest dates. When I was done with my tales he looked at me and said, simply, "Wow." Then he made me a sincere and interesting offer - he said that he would look over potential dates to translate their profiles from guy-speak to Julie-speak.

Interesting.

It made me think... are some of my dates not working out simply because I'm unable to read boy code? Can he offer me the online dating equivalent to the secret decoder ring in the box of Cheerios? Are men and women really so different that even a general dating profile needs to be translated for the opposite sex?

One general difference I've noticed between the ex's is that, what would take me and a number of girlfriends 20 words to say, would take my male friends about 5 words. Neither is better per se, but when you're trying to decipher a dude's profile - where only words and maybe some pics are available to you - I figured it'd be helpful to get a guy's interpretation on a dude's potential for me.

I took my friend up on his offer and showed him three profiles of potential matches. In less than 24 hours, I got the following interpretation from him:


Guy 1:
He looks like Larry David. He’s the guy you meet in a bar who looks like Larry David. Never mention Larry David when you’re trying to meet a lady. Larry David.

Guy 2:
He wants to date Jennifer Garner. He thinks he’s Ben Affleck.

Guy 3:
He’s at the store every Weds when the new comic books come out. Really (I mean REALLY) out of shape and if you’re lucky, has good hygiene.


In guy-speak terms, I went from considering a funny guy, a nice guy and a slightly dorky guy to a Larry David look-a-like, a guy I'm sorely mismatched with since I look nothing like Jennifer Garner and an out-of-shape, stinky comic book addict.

Now I'm wondering - has adding the guy-speak translation helped or hurt my cause?

What do you think? Do I need a man to meet a man?

No Gasping Over Robert Pattinson

I have gratefully surrounded myself with good friends. They are loyal, funny, smart, fun and... honest. Many of you know my good friend, Alicia - who also happens to be my boss at On the Leesh Productions. Alicia and I have had a surprisingly easy time navigating the sometimes uncomfortable waters of a friend/boss relationship. We both have a work voice and a friend voice, and have keen ears to which is being used when. So it was to my surprise when, during a "friend conversation" Boss Alicia came out and commanded that I cease... gasping.

Yes, you've read that correctly. She commanded that I cease gasping. Now, I'm sure you're not surprised that I'm a gasper. Most who know me know that I have a flare for drama at times, and have had the occasion to react to something with a slight intake of breath... a gasp, if you will. Call it my dramatic outlet.

Back to the story at hand. One evening, Alicia and I were discussing I can't remember what, when she pointed to a long movie line that went around the corner. In reaction to said long line, I gasped.

After said gasp, Alicia promptly announced that she and I were in dire need of a gasp-appropriateness discussion. Apparently a long movie line is not gasp worthy and my throwing inhalations around like such cheap trash has brought on Alicia's ire.

About one week later, I received an email with the following subject line: THE GASP LIST. The body of the email contained two lists: Gasp Worthy and Not Gasp Worthy.

If you, like me, have a dramatic flare for things... I present you with Part 1 of your Gasp List Guide from my boss/friend combo, Alicia.


THE GASP LIST, Part 1 (written by Alicia, for Julie)

1. if i walk out of my office with stigmata

2. if you woke up pregnant tomorrow (i get to gasp)

3. if Russell Crowe comes out of the closet

4. if your dog, Dyna-Dog starts speaking Arabic

5. if your cat, Olivia runs up a $5,000 pay-per-porn charge on your cable box

6. if while sky diving with me, my shoot doesn't open

7. if Labron James announces that he moved to miami to join the ballet

8. setting eyebrows on fire

9. seeing Baryshnikov fall out of a pirouette

10. finding out Santa is not real



THE NOT GASP WORTHY LIST, Part 1 (by Alicia, written for Julie)

1. traffic

2. not getting the right salad dressing

3. out of toilet paper

4. hearing Bad Romance four times in one-hour on the radio

5. seeing R-Patz

( i will however allow a gasp if you see r-pats, coach mark wahlberg, george clooney, leo, riggins and paul newman (circa exodus) all playing basketball as skins against the harlem globetrotters (yes even the fictional characters and the dead guy must be present to warrant a full gasp)

6. burning toast

7. a run in your panty hose

8. learning that it's a small world is not running - it always gets backed up

( i will however allow a gasp if the only working ride were the wed way people mover)

9. if i pee my pants on Kingda Ka - have you seen that ride?

10. if you meet the real life Cullens (no one would believe you, so don't waste a gasp)

Dating Advice

My friend Shannon, who might I mention, has her own blog HERE, recently strapped me down and made me listen to Miley Cyrus songs repeatedly until I told her my login and password for the online dating site that I'm on. And when I say she strapped me down and forced MC's music into my ears, I mean that she asked me for the information politely. Since entering the online dating world, Shannon has offered many an opinion about my choices in dudes. My dating life thus far has included being cursed out, being told a guy's sexual fantasy in sordid detail and being given poetry about a dead pet - and these all happened before I went on an actual date with any of them! I'd go to my married friend Shannon with wide-eyes and my mouth hanging open in curious wonder and she'd offer me a glass of wine and then kindly tell me that I didn't know how to pick the right guy(!). It was her wish that she perform a coup on the ruling party that was ME and become the leader of my online single existence. Perhaps she anticipated more resistance, but in all honesty, I was relieved! Fabulous, I thought! Take over! If I'm never cursed out again it won't be soon enough! And so it was that Shannon became Julie online.

The very next day I woke up to an email from her, announcing that she'd contacted the perfect man for me. She had found my destiny. She espoused how much we had in common, how cute he was and, though one cannot read tone in an email, I imagined she was typing whilst grinning and skipping. With the backing of my Ruler of Romance, I went ahead and contacted the guy that same day. I thought, you know, this might actually work. Shannon is one of my closest friends - my Clint Eastwood if you will - having been right by my side through the good, the bad, and some of the ugliest times I've ever had. She's offered advice and her opinion on all aspects of my life - why not go one step further and have her do a little matchmaking for me? I knew she was secretly writing a wedding toast for my upcoming nuptial with this perfect man. It might be safe to say that she was more excited than I was.

He never contacted me back.

After about a week, I told Shannon that I never heard from him. This time it was her coming to me, wide-eyed, with her mouth hanging open in curious wonder and me with a ready glass of wine. After all, friendship, like online dating, goes both ways.

That Couple Is Cheating On Me

I was part of a great foursome. And by that, I don’t mean some dirty foursome, as in swing-this-way-foursome. My ex and I had a couple that we got along with perfectly. There was no - ‘oh, the women are friends, so the husbands have to hang out’ or ‘he’s nice but man, she’s a nightmare.’ We all genuinely liked each other. Even our dogs got along. We’d go out to dinner, have game nights, movie nights, simple hang out nights and sometimes, we’d separate and do just the girls while the guys hung out.

Now our foursome is a threesome...again, not the dirty kind. The couple is like family to me and I still love hanging out with both of them and try to do it as often as possible. And while I think I’m pretty fun to hang out with, I can’t morph myself into two people (and I certainly can’t morph myself into being a dude). Naturally, my friends found another go-to couple for their game nights and such. Naturally. Yet, I find myself... jealous. Is that weird? My girlfriend and I have spoken about the breakup of my marriage often, but recently the discussion was less about my feelings regarding said breakup, or the transition to singlehood and more about what a bummer the breakup of the foursome has been. It’s really a big ol’ bummer. She concurred.

When I go on dates now, I find myself not only looking for someone that could possibly be a good fit for me, but I try to suss out whether they’d be a good fit for my friend’s husband. I want to ask... “so, um... Do you like strategy games? Are you up on technology? Could you say, have a well thought out conversation about a good graphic novel you’ve read recently? Do you even read graphic novels? And if no, would you be willing to have a go at reading one soon?”

And do I add these questions before or after the question about whether he’s okay with my dog sleeping in the bed (see previous entry if confused)?

Oy. I should just create a questionnaire. Or better yet, maybe I’ll just bring my friend’s husband and my dog on the date with me. Just get it all figured out right then and there.

Thoughts?