Besties at 35

Making new friends when you’re 13 is inevitable. Expected. We’re all awkward and alone and looking for that common bond that will soon make someone our ‘BFF’ and so we find them. In English class or at the lunch table. At a party or in gym. There is strength in numbers in middle school and you can’t go it alone between pep rallies, history exams and Friday night parties where the parents aren’t going to be there. So, you team up and between braces and school lunch, science goggles and that cute boy in Science class – you become friends. Even Best Friends with someone. Maybe several people. At 31, making friends is not so easy. It’s not like you’re sitting next to someone every day in History class anymore. And, once you know who you are, you’re quicker to judge whether or not you have anything in common with someone else. Quicker to rule new people as acquaintances, never really opening up and actually becoming friends. But, in comparing times when a girl needs a good bunch of girlfriends going through similar things in life – early adolescence and early Motherhood probably rate pretty close to one another as times when ‘going it alone’ is just not a good idea.

It sounds like a bad joke, but this is the way it happened. Three guys that all went to high school together all get three girls pregnant. None of them planned pregnancies and within 6 months of one another, they will all be parents to beautiful, lucky, little girls and I would form a bond with a group of girls, women in fact, that 10 years ago I would have thought would be impossible. Not because I have a tough time making friends or that any of them do, but the dynamics are just unheard of. They all know each other. They all went to high school together. They are cute and fun and full of attitude and party ideas – themed party ideas. Who does that? They do that. They love to have fun, have drinks and talk about their sex lives. They are bold and brave and love concerts and music and getting together with their friends. And I met them as the lone pregnant outsider dating a guy they all kindof hated for his high school chauvinism. Older than them by at least 7 years you wouldn’t think this type of friendship ever even begins. But, it does. And through the past 5 years, I have evolved and watched them evolve into their careers and relationships, houses and partners, into their roles as wives and Mothers and into my life as some of my best friends. I have seen them grow into themselves as adults from young 20 something girls and have been impressed with their talents, their patience, their motivation, their ethics, their ability to balance work and life and kids and husbands, their tolerance for each other’s differences, their kindness, their humor, their ‘yes-I’ll-own-it’ bitchiness when the shoe fits, their heartfelt ability to tell each other the truth without being rude, their honesty when things irritate them, their ability to throw a good party, their ability to join a good party, the way they show up for one another always and their willingness to welcome in a girl from outside their group who 4 years ago, sat rubbing my pregnant belly, unsure how I was going to make it through Motherhood on my own without girlfriends to share these new, scary things in my life with. To ask the questions you don’t want to ask your doctor or to talk through the frustrations you have with your husband and need some good advice from people who know you, but aren’t related to you or celebrate with for the amazing things that happen like the first time they poop in the potty or their first tooth or we got engaged or that first day of preschool or I just turned 25, 27, 35!!! I have been impressed by this group of girls and feel eternally grateful to have them in my life when I have needed it most and while it’s clear that had we met many years earlier we just couldn’t have been friends because when I was 17 they were all 10 and that would have just been weird – I count them today as some of my Besties. At 35.