 |
| 19 Years of Friendship |
Sometimes it is so nice to get out of normal – to step
outside the routines and patterns that shape your typical day and week – to
stretch and play and eat and be in a way that is true to yourself, but also
outside of yourself. The experience is both refreshing and affirming as it
provides perspective on the life you have chosen and the people that you love
most – absence makes the heart grow fonder.
I just spent three days travelling sans family to the East
Coast to visit a best friend and to celebrate the wedding of another friend.
This trip was the longest non-work-related trip I have taken away from my
family and it was pure indulgence in so many ways.
Without the duties of home and family, I got to
spend hours talking and hanging out with one of my best friends in the world.
We ate al fresco and very well on multiple occasions and at odd hours. We slept
in, ran together, puttered about, and did yoga in our underwear using bath towels
as mats. We talked about our kids and our husbands and our jobs, and then because
we had the time, we talked about the other things in our lives that we might not
otherwise normally get to.
 |
| Plymouth Rock |
 |
| The Mayflower |
With relaxation and self-care in mind, I took long, luxurious
showers, got a facial, and in an uncharacteristic (but price-negotiated) splurge,
got my makeup done, although I undid most of the glamour before actually going
to the wedding.
With deep interest, I finished a book (Gretchen Rubin’s The
Happiness Project). The issues raised in this book resonated strongly with me, and
I plan to explore some of the tenants further - in my life and here at
MommyTasker.
 |
| The Beautiful Bride |
With great joy, I celebrated my friend’s marriage in a
magical garden setting overlooking the water. An adventuresome spirit, the
bride arrived by boat and thus began the rather epic event, complete with
tears, laughter, dancing, and fabulous food and cocktails, all of it replete
with New England charm. Although I very much enjoyed the wedding, two elements of it
were rather bittersweet.
The first is that being there forced me to acknowledge
how much distance had actually formed between the bride and I. For the last
five years, while I have been ensconced with birthing and raising kids, she has
continued with the mountain biking and climbing and travelling that so defined
our once-very-close friendship. By
virtue of less time spent, and such massively different priorities, we have
necessary grown apart. To illustrate the point, one of her childhood friends that
was seated next to me mentioned that she had heard so much about me, and then recounted
the disappointment the bride had expressed to her when I had my children. It was
not that she wasn’t happy for me, it was just that she could not relate to the
fact that I was trading in my life of fun and adventure for the life of a mom. That
being said, I felt a real mutual tenderness in my interactions with my friend,
and we parted with renewed expression of interest in getting together more
often. Now married, she is necessarily in a different phase of her life that better
approximates where I am. Perhaps in that we will have more commonality again,
even if there are 25 miles and a traffic-filled bridge between us.
 |
| Heading Out Solo |
The second piece of bittersweetness stemmed from the fact
that I attended the wedding solo, only my second time ever doing that. I actually appreciated
the experience, both for the challenge of it (withstanding the East Coast pedigree
assessment: What is your last name? Where
did you grow up? Where did you go to college? What do you do for work?),
and the enjoyment of it (dancing, dancing, dancing). But there were also times
where I felt the tug of missing my husband, especially in those moments of
tenderness witnessed during the ceremony and on the dance floor.
Part of being a mom is giving up some of yourself to foster
the growth and development of your children and to nurture the wholeness of
your family. Some relationships and experiences can be casualties of those
tradeoffs, at least temporarily. A true test for yourself and the resiliency of
your relationships is who you have in your life and what you want to do as an
individual when you come out of the infancy tunnel, or other major
developmental milestones or life transitions. Now, as my son turns two, I am just
starting to figure that out. My recent foray into a new job, and this latest
weekend escapade are part of that ask. I plan to have many more opportunities
to grow and reassess over the course of the next few years.
I give many thanks to my amazing husband and my father, whose
teamwork facilitated me going on this trip; to my children who forgave me for
leaving without saying a proper good bye; to an amazing world that has so many
places to explore; to my friend who has never been far from my heart and who made the effort to leave her family behind to spend the weekend with me; and to the friend who has found the love of her life, and in doing that perhaps will come more fully back into mine.
Summer is ending, but each day is a new beginning.
Summer is ending, but each day is a new beginning.
0 comments:
Post a Comment