What I know

It’s nothing extravagant, really.  We open up the take out boxes filled with sushi and hibatchi swordfish and shrimp and uncork a bottle of Chardonnay.  The thunderstorms outside are getting closer and the lights flicker on and off, on and off.  She lights some candles, just in case.  We sit around the food and the wine and we talk.  Hour after hour.  We talk about work and careers and politics.  We mull over family life, being pregnant, being women, being never happy with our size and weight.  We discuss, in intricate details, our relationships – what we need and what we want and what we can never get enough of. 

She isn’t a typical friend.  We are separated by more than a decade of years and experiences and we have a very unconventional series of relationships.  And yet, there is something there.  Some ease about what exists between us – a genuine admiration for each other, a real respect for the other’s brains and humor.  A confidence that whatever is said will not be judged. 

These talks don’t happen often.  Our schedules and our lives don’t permit us to sit side by side, without interuption, and hash over the intimate details.  But in between these talks, there is the unspoken comfort of endless support and assistance, whatever the need be.  When my grandmother passed away in June, she wrapped her arms around me and made me dinner and baked me brownies and offered me a place to not be alone.  When her son was diagnosed with a potentially scary heart condition, I dropped my groceries on the kitchen floor and fled to her house and sat next to her as she spoke and was silent, alternating between laughter and tears. 

I am so lucky to have you, she says to me, do you know that? 

What I know is that my life has taken such a different turn in the past few years.  I know that I am utterly and completely not where I thought I would be at all.  And through all of that, I have landed in this other place – this place she has helped me build really – and find myself enormously grateful for the chance to have walked into her house that one particular afternoon, with the agenda of getting a part-time job, nothing more.    I know that through her, I have found a second family, one who loves me and opens their door to me every time I need it.  A family I can’t imagine ever not knowing, having sewn themselves into the corners of my heart. 

I know that I really am the lucky one.