History

I’ve been thinking a lot about history lately. Not History, like the Civil War or the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler, but history in the sense of shared history with friends and family. It all began last week when I attended a small get-together in honor of my aunt’s “going away” for the summer, given by some of my friends. At the little get-together there were three women who had known each other since elementary school. That began my nostalgia for a shared history with friends. I immediately began a small pity-party, attended by only me, regretting a childhood spent moving several times and leaving good friends. I envied the longstanding relationship the three women at the party shared.

The following morning I attended a bridal shower with my daughter for a young woman who had been my daughter’s best friend from Kindergarten through sixth grade. They hit junior high school and went their separate ways, but we were invited to the bridal shower and were thrilled to attend and wish this friend best wishes on her upcoming marriage. The history my daughter and the bride-to-be shared was something that couldn’t be ignored. Again I found myself wishing for a longstanding history such as this.

So my thoughts were set and I began thinking a lot about longstanding relationships. I soon realized I was in the enviable position of possessing a number of friendships with respectable histories. I have the good fortune to be friends with a group of women I have known since the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. I met one friend when my husband and I began dating and the others soon after. We have gone through childbirth, raising children, pre-school, elementary school, junior high, high school, college, children’s marriages, and in some cases grandchildren together. We have suffered divorces, illnesses, bridge lessons and miscarriages together. These are my oldest and dearest friends and we are truly bound by our shared history.

Last year I had a reunion with my college sorority sisters. After almost thirty years we got together and time and age (and gray hair) were erased for a the weekend we spent recalling our time together as young adults discovering who we were. The history we share is priceless. We spent that magical time between our teen years and adulthood together.

Recently the popularity of Facebook among the fifty-somethings has reconnected me with friends from high school. We are all grown up, responsible adults, but we share the knowledge of knowing who had acne, who had crushes, and who had unplanned teen pregnancies. In short, we really have a history.

I am also fortunate to have newer friends; friends who share common interests, work, lifestyles. Friends who love to get together often to share food and wine, friends who I am making a history with now; friends who send me funny emails and messages on facebook, friends who call me on Friday night to see if I can come by for a drink.

If I were looking for a history I needn’t look farther than my own family, kind of like Dorothy and her own backyard. I am lucky to come from one of those big Irish-Catholic families where the aunts, uncles and cousins are scattered across generations. My aunts and uncles are my contemporaries, closer to my age than my mother’s. What a history I have there, we have known each other since my birth. We have a friendship that is closer than the typical aunt/niece or uncle/niece relationship. They have seen me through every stage of my life and vice-versa – there is no more history that that!

In addition to these wonderful history-fueled relationships I have yet another. I have a new friendship by virtue of my daughter’s marriage. My daughter’s in-laws are now part of my family. The histories of my son-in-law and his parents are now part of our family’s history. We are bound together because of the union of our children. We have become privy to another family’s past as it has melded with ours.

How fortunate I am to have such rich and deep friendships; friendships with such rich and deep histories. I won't be attending any more pity-parties for a while.