girlfriends

Picking up my college roommates from the train station, the first thing M says is: Look at A's boots! A is sporting a pair of resilient chunky ankle-high hiking boots, prepared for our hike at Sleeping Giant. She has small hands and feet for her size, and the combination of petite and hardcore in the shoes give immediate amusement (and continual throughout the day as we talk about how to maximize the use of her boots during our hike).

I haven't seen these girls for a few months, and there's no need for hello, only laughs.

On our hike, I naturally read the map wrong, but we do manage to reach our destination. Along the way we talk and talk, and I'm reminded of how different conversations are with different people. There's a certain silliness and inappropriateness and openness specific to my interactions with these girls, these girls with whom I went through such a defining period of growth--not just the confusion of college but the daze of post-college and the feigned maturity of post-post college.

And it's with them that a weekend of girlfriends began, a weekend where I'm deeply reminded that I am a girl, and that it is amazing to be one. With M & A, we run through the gamut of past and current boys and flings, past and current fashions; the quality of kisses (and so on), the quality of our own bodies and how to be self-accepting; the irrationality of moods and ups and downs, and how we cope. We share the insecurities that come with being female and a person, freely and honestly because we know it's common among us and because in the end they will be sweetly funny and not damaging.

It is nice to share the trees with them, and a part of my life with them, and they appreciate it too. It's a long hike that tires us, but we reach the tower I keep telling them is the destination--it's a short tower that is anticlimactic as we approach, but it holds the view with the breeze as they fit into the arches of the tower's windows. We reward ourselves with ice cream (two scoops, which proves to be too much), and some napping at home before dinner.

The bed is where we gather before their departure, in the cozy style of a sleepover. Which lends itself to sharing photographs, commenting on male facial hair and body odor, talking about people from college I haven't thought about in ages, wondering whether people notice when you wear the same outfit ("I don't judge, but I notice"), comparing our stretch marks. In between these there lies what's more conventionally considered substance--jobs, future plans, philosophies and approaches to day-to-day and to things broadly. But when they leave I'm aware that there is incredible weight to everything we share, the kind that makes me paradoxically, wonderfully feel full and light.

*

It's this lightness that carries me through the night, where three of my med school girlfriends and I go out to dance. During dinner with M, A, and the wife, we tell M & A about our dance plans.

M: You're going to dance, just the two of you?
Wife & me, simultaneous: *shrug* we do it all the time!

(This night there are four of us, but we have gone out with just two many a good time). It's an eclectic crowd, the four of us girls, but we share the strong desire to dance that precludes caring about being the only ones on the dance floor. At Barcelona, this means having the entire space to ourselves, and I'm again so happy to be a girl. At Black Bear there are more people and songs that bring out the inner excitable. Being with girls who move with distinct styles and without any thought other than to have fun, and whose fun is so apparent in their faces and bodies, is a constant source of energy, and the fun grows exponentially with every second.

It feels so good to go all out, to both be aware of our physical selves and to let go of self-consciousness.

*

On the next day, with these same girls we make dumplings and watch Shakespeare's As You Like It as the Cabaret. I get sleepy during the play, in which I pay more attention to the use of space and creation of atmosphere than plot. And I think, what range of experiences I can have with the girls in my life, and what depth I reach in each one.

These ladies make me feel that at baseline we're something to be grateful to be: people who are capable. Of having all sorts of negative and positive feelings, from silly and jealous and insecure, to confident and affirming and persistent. It's not any one thing but more the spectrum, that I love.