Sister Friends

I didn't grow up with a sister. I often imagined what that would be like as my little brother smacked me upside the head with his Darth Vader lightsaber. Like my own two daughters, we would certainly always support one another, no matter what:

"One day, I want to travel way up in the sky and bottle up some clouds to bring home in a jar so I can watch it rain next to my bed," my youngest told us one day. I couldn't help but smile.

"That's the silliest thing I have ever heard of," said my oldest. "Don't you know that water vapor floating in air would condense? Go ahead if you want to, but I'm telling you right now, all you'll end up with is an old mayo jar full of air with a few drops of water in it."

"Thanks for crushing my dreams," the little one sniffed.

"Well, I didn't sit throughout thirty six weeks of fourth grade science for nothing," came the reply.

When my brother would get mad at me, lock me out of the house and then turn on the sprinklers, I would think that surely sisters had their own secret language and would never let anything get in between them.

"Punch buggy, no punch buggie," my girls scream in unison from the back seat, scaring me senseless. I narrowly avoid the yellow VW bug that's pulled out in front of us.

"American jinx," they yell again directly into each other's faces.

"No fair! I said it first," says one.

"Ouch!!!" spits out the other. "Why did you go and hit me again?"

"Because my mind told me to!"

"Meanie!"

"Dork!"

"Baby!"

"Whatever"

Growing up, I figured I had missed out on that most precious and coveted relationship dynamic called sisterhood. As a child, finding solid friends that were girls was a tough prospect. We moved around a lot and attended way too many schools. The fact that I was shy, awkward, and lived in my own head didn't help matters all that much. And let's face it ladies, in middle and high school, girls can be just plain, awful mean. It's easy in hindsight to say, “Hey, those were their own hang-ups and insecurities coming through, not mine,” but mean words and rumors still sting and are hard to forget. I did find though, that once the Jordache jeans wore out, the friendship pins retired, and the hormones settled, everything changed for the better.

Friendships are precious. You have to seek them out, put in the time, open up, and hold on to them. Only some of them are simply serendipitous, kismet . . . meant to be. I call these my sister friends: the women who, if I were lucky enough to have a sister, would most definitely fit the bill.

One in particular, wandered into my life quite by happenchance, after a yoga class almost five years ago. Her extended family quickly became my extended family, her children like my own. Even our kids fight, laugh, and play like cousins together.

She has such generosity of spirit, grace, and most importantly, one wicked sense of humor. One of the things I have learned from her is that no matter what happens, to stay strong, stay on course, and never give up. From time to time, I still pull out my acorn bracelet she gave me after a particularly stinging personal rejection of my work. It still helps stop the flow of self-doubt that is always there around the edges, trying to find its way in. She is right, you know.

True friendships aren’t meant to bring you down, but to hold you up. I know without a doubt I am stronger with her in my life, just by knowing her. She might not be down the road anymore, but she will always be a part of my life.

I am going to miss you, Stacey, so much. And I know, I know. Buck up, Atlanta isn't that far away.

Alicia, another one of my “sister friends,” gave me the book “Love You, Mean It” four years ago for my birthday. It is a heartbreaking, tear-jerking, honest account of four 9/11 widows who came together in the aftermath of such despair and destruction to form a beautiful and unbreakable bond of love and friendship. Soon, they began to end their conversations, emails and texts with those very words: “I love you. Mean it.” They wrote, “what had started as a lighthearted goodbye . . . became something much more. The more we said the words, the more we realized how much we did love one another and how grateful we each were to have the other women in our lives . . . To us, the message was clear: Love is a gift. Share it.”

I hope my girls find this in each other, as well as in the many friendships with other women that they will form over their lifetimes. After all, no matter where you go or where you end up, with great girlfriends, anything is possible. We just have to love each other. And mean it.

LUMI, Stace. See you real soon.