Beaches

Confession: When I was in high school, I went to see the movie Beaches in the movie theater around fourteen times. True story. Can we still be friends? Wait, where are you all going?

I saw Beaches on some channel -- probably Lifetime -- some Sunday morning recently, and while I still loved it out of pure nostalgia, I have to admit it doesn't quite justify fourteen theater viewings.

But when I was fourteen and couldn't even drive myself to the theater, that movie provided the perfect cathartic release: it featured my beloved California, it focused on female friendship, it gave me a darkened room in which to cry and process a whole bunch of hormones and emotions. It filled a need.

This past weekend filled another need. One of my very best friends from college, one of my touchstones, came to visit me. She wasn't here on business and she wasn't here to go to a theme park. She just came to see me.

I met her the first day of my freshman year. She was a big, know-it-all sophomore on my hallway. I thought her very glamorous with her long legs and her boyfriend. Soon, we were fast friends. I was a sheltered, naive, clueless kid from the suburbs, and she was my wise and profound friend from the Bronx. She taught me a lot about music and a lot about beer. I am forever indebted.

Flash through a montage of smoky, beer-soaked parties, skipping classes lying out on beach towels on green lawns, a birthday dinner at Tavern on the Green, sultry summers in the humid city, late nights in taprooms dancing to Van Morrison. And then it -- college, the golden hour -- it was over. She moved on to law school, I graduated and moved on to New York. We moved on to our own romances and marriages, our own trials and hours of desperation and sadness. And since college, we have only briefly even lived in the same time zone. But there was always us, good or bad, frustrated or elated, weary or thrilled. Us.

And now she is godmother to my Firstborn, the perfect audience for his best baseball game ever. She cheered for him when he won his first game ball this past weekend. Better yet, she and I were able to spend one lovely, languid night together at the beach. Awash in a sea of Nascar fans, we drank 20-ounce Yuenglings and talked about marriage and life and how far we have come and how much and how little some things change. We walked for two hours on a sunny beach, earning taut sunburns for the effort, and we passed out on the couch. We've been going to beaches together for almost twenty years now, I realize.

Hooray for friends who really are like sisters, for beaches that remind us of who we were at 18 and 19 and the dreams we still have room for even as we turn 37 and 38. Hooray for weekends -- even moments -- that give us respite from the grind of our daily lives, so vastly different in their details. How lucky I am, and how lucky my children are, that I have her in my life.