When I was about sixteen or so, my friend’s mother told me she had an inkling I’d marry young. I felt as though she were testing me, to see how I’d respond. Was that a good thing or was she warning me away from foolish commitment? The truth was, I’d been passionately loyal to a handful of girls, her daughter included, and they’d all eventually tired of my friendship and moved on. If I could find someone willing to lock in, I figured I’d probably sign on for the long haul. Five years after her prediction, I did just that. I haven’t looked back on the rollercoaster of angst that was female friendship from those days, but it’s a puzzle that continues to fascinate me.
#BFF
When women tag other women online with words like “bestie” I feel simultaneously jealous and relieved. I wonder if they’re compensating for some kind of relational deficit elsewhere that they need to show off online. Acute FOMO strikes, along with a nagging suspicion about sisterhood. There’s a sorority I’m excluded from while I’m uncertain I really want the secret handshake. I need female friends, but I crave reliability most of all. I like having fun, but it’s not my number one priority. Show me loyalty and I’m yours for life.
All of this to say that despite my wariness about leaning deeply into female friendship as an adult, along came Frankie.*
Let’s go back a few seasons so I can tell you about how we fell for one another. When the kids started school, they needed to be dropped off at two different schools, a couple kilometres apart. A friend of mine, who’s really into bikes, suggested an x-tra cycle. The contraption he fabricated in his garage was a thing of beauty. He helped me source lightweight aluminum to build a safety cage for the kids and we were off. Riding down the street we attracted a lot of attention, and people stopped me just to inquire about our sweet ride.
The bike!
And that’s how I met Frankie. On the first day of grade one, she rode onto the playground with her two kids, on the exact same bike. We hit it off right away, even though I immediately felt like I was leading her on. I wasn’t a hard-core biker at all. In fact, not long afterwards, my kids grew too big for our bike, and I could no longer pedal them up hill. The bike languished in the shed and I ended up driving more and more. Lucky for me, Frankie already liked me and so she ignored the bait and switch I’d pulled on her.
For the next five years, she became my go to friend in the neighbourhood. When our local school announced a new era of i-pads in the classroom, we both cried. There goes education, welcome the zombies, we’d lament to one another. At Halloween she’d hand out toothbrushes. I told her she was being extreme, and also toothbrushes were more expensive than candy. She conceded that yes, that was true, and then skipped Halloween altogether. I feel I may owe her kids an apology. I tried! Honestly, I tried!
Frankie is an explorer and eagerly sampled our city’s best coffee shops, embracing Americanos as though each cup were an adventure. She’d lead me through different neighbourhoods on field trips and wherever we ended up we’d go deep into the challenges of marriage, vocation and parenting. If I were writing something new, she’d read it over, and if she cried at the end of the page, I felt successful. I felt like I’d won the Pulitzer, the Giller, the CBC literary prize.
Other times, we’d cocoon together and watch Netflix during the daytime; savouring the guilty pleasure of skipping whatever important thing we were supposed to be doing.
Every year as June approached, Frankie would begin to get more and more agitated with the school system. Expectations, consequences, authority… all these themes crept into our conversations as our kids navigated friendships of their own, and made good and bad choices along the way. Inevitably, she would despair of the gulf between her ideals of education and the grunt, sweat & daily grind of public school. Straddling the world of teaching and parenting, I gently tried to pull her from the “I’m going to homeschool!” ledge, not because I think homeschooling is bad and public school is awesome, but mostly because it was more fun to go to Home Depot with her than on my own. Her kids would get in the way of our fun if she went full out crunchy granola.
“As iron sharpens iron, so one [wo]man sharpens another”, the proverb goes. Frankie sharpened my worldview by constantly thrusting me in the path of workshops, friends and books that challenged my faith and priorities. She loved the book “Dance of a Dissident Daughter” by Sue Monk Kidd and after reading it promptly stopped going to church. I put it on my shelf of books to never read. (When people ask my denominational affiliation I think “obedient doubter” should be a category.)
Frankie and I talked a lot about suffering and the meaning of it. I confessed I secretly hoped that I could barter with God. As in, “Hey God, I’ll write this big cheque and you don’t kill my kids.” She didn’t think my strategy was very good and suggested I’d be better served arming myself with friends who could comfort me if my kids died, cancer happened, the house burned down etc. I told her she was cramping my style and she gave me that sanguine look and said, “wine?”
I was onto her pre-emptive moves.
Before Frankie I didn’t know that in the hour before kid pick-up you could have tea or wine depending on the way your week was going. I’ve lived in my east end neighbourhood for eleven years, and her couch is where I’ve spent more time than anyone else’s. She’s been my free therapist, friend and confidante, her home an open door. If she got a new haircut and it was great but the hairdresser was forming a cult, she’d ask – should she go back? I liked to feel my view mattered. I liked that she inhabited a world were such ridiculousness could even be considered. Who else really cared about my opinion on such things? Being consulted on frivolousness by my most intellectual friends makes me believe I have range or something. Like I might be knowledgeable about A, B and C and then out of left field someone cares to know what I think about Z and I feel stupidly flattered, and flattery almost always works on me.
(Side note: Don’t go to Cult Hairdressers. They are literally holding sharp objects at your throat!)
Our first storytelling event in Hamilton
A few months ago I showed up for a party that had been cancelled and was left feeling properly ditched. No matter how old you get, getting stood up always stings. As I ruminated on the sidewalk with my tray of gourmet appetizers, I thought I couldn’t just go home. I refused to go home and instead called Frankie. She opened her door, found booze and helped me polish off the walnut and cheese stuffed dates I’d made to impress the friends who’d invited me to a party they cancelled when the people they liked more couldn’t make it. The food tasted sweeter because she shared it with me, and also because most of my good recipes came from her in the first place.
The next season of “Grace & Frankie” should be on Netflix soon, and I was looking forward to resuming day drinking, child delinquency problem solving, “healthy” cake recipe testing etc. when Frankie dropped a bomb and announced she actually was stepping off the ledge. She and her husband had decided to make a move, sell their home, and head west for adventure, work and a fresh start. I began sending Google images of forest fires, falsified police reports of rampant crime, rumours that the Rocky Mountains would fall into the sea… nothing. It was fruitless.
I know how people are when they get the west coast bug. Suddenly the humidity in Ontario becomes oppressive, the pollution insupportable and the hustle and bustle of the city strangulating.
She told me when she went out west on a reconnaissance trip she saw eagles every day, and now I suddenly dislike eagles very much. I spotted one this summer on vacation, and though part of me was thrilled, another part of me thought, “You’re not worth moving across the country for!” Because yelling at nature helps. Ha.
The morning I went to say goodbye to Frankie, I was packing for a writing retreat with some amazing and talented women who’ve become more than colleagues, but also friends. My bathing suit was still damp from a weekend away with my high school girlfriends, beautiful women who know one another’s flaws and still gather together annually to celebrate friendship in it’s most unvarnished light. The crockpot on my counter is rinsed out and plugged back in daily as potluck season is in full swing. For goodness sakes, I’m too popular to be sad and lonely! – says the little red devil on my shoulder. He sounds like Danny DeVito. The angel on the other side sounds like Rhea Perlman though. She tells me to have a little cry and then pull myself together, go out dancing! So I do, and it’s awesome, but I still miss Frankie.
I would like to feel sorry for myself and wallow a bit. I’d like to see what happens when I’m lonely and bored, what I might create, what might get clean. (Frankie’s German and her house was so clean, I’d go there for inspiration.)
I should do some tasks, the boring ones I keep putting off, but I can’t seem to muster the energy and it’s raining besides. It’s a perfect day for watching T.V, but what felt naughty and indulgent with Frankie will just feel like slovenly excess on my own.
As a kid, I had an elderly neighbour who’d been married three times. His last wife was the nurse of his second wife, and twenty-five years his junior. He lived into his nineties and regaled our family with a lifetime of stories. But for all his living, the advice he most wanted to impart was the importance of making new friends. He eschewed quaint clichés like, “there are friends for a reason, a season and a lifetime” and instead advocated being brave enough to continually cultivate friendships. Once you get set in your ways, he remarked, people die.
I guess it’s heartbreak or death.
I’m not feeling especially brave, nor do I have a cool bike anymore to trick people into being my friend, but my heart is wider thanks to Frankie. Though she’s irreplaceable, my awesome tree-of-a-friend, I’ll try and plant flowers around this stump that is the loss of her daily presence and wait to see what kinds of birds come drink from the blooms or make nests from the stems.
Until we meet again.
*Not her real name.
I borrowed the title of today’s post from the soundtrack to my new favourite Spanish soap opera.
Do you want to waste time watching the next season with me? Must love melodrama.