The other day my mom was telling me that she got in touch with her school friends after 45 years!
Wow! That’s just awesome, I told her.
I haven’t seen my mom so excited in years. It brought out a charm in her that was hidden for a long time. I had heard stories about her girlfriends all my life. She always used to tell me that “girlfriends are for life, never lose them” and it looked like she just got her girlfriends back! She went about telling me how all the 60-year-olds had launched a big search operation to find my mom and how it all culminated in the formation of a WhatsApp group to never lose touch again! All these talks about friends got me nostalgic about my girls and I started to miss those good ole days!
I don’t even remember how it all started and when I exactly met my girl gang, but we have traversed through unending stretches of highs and lows ever since and life has been an awesome journey to date. Finding them was like finding my soul mates. They understand me in a way that can’t be described in words. I don’t know what I would have done without them. There have been so many moments in my life when they have pulled me out of bed and pushed me out of the door and told me to “Suck it up!”
I still remember the infinite circle of unending talks and the marathon of waves of laughter post the serious talks that we used to share.
Life was so simple back then!
If you look at us now, I am pretty confident no one will believe that it is the same set of people I am talking about. The ebb and flow of life have left its deep imprints on all of us, but our friendship still stands unbroken through the test of time.
One of my friends is a mother of two now. She is struggling to keep up with her demanding job and also trying to strike a balance at the home front. Her husband is a marine engineer, so there is that span when she has to switch her life back and turn herself into that single parent or the wonder woman like we call her in our group. I have seen her do this for the last few years and I know that it is not so easy switching back and forth every six months and still keep smiling and climbing the career ladder and raising a perfect daughter.
Two of my other friends have moved to different countries. One is in Canada reunited with the love of her life after 10 long years. Her patience during those years made us have faith in love all over again and the fact that there is something epic about love which we rarely get to see between couples these days. Their torturous long-distance relationship to happily married ever after, was through a never-ending dark tunnel but they made it through, and that what matters in the end.
The other friend of mine, who moved to the UK, had a tumultuous marriage. She decided to tie the knot with the man she had been dating for five years only to realize later about his extramarital affair. Her life has been a struggle ever since as she had left her job back home just before the marriage, and had moved to a new country, signed up for the new life only to unravel the tragedy. Her parents were as shattered as she was and we knew we had to hold on to her and extend whatever support we could. We kept all our problems aside and pitched in to make sure she got back on her feet. She did rise from her ashes like a phoenix after two long years and she had our full support with all the hard decisions she had to make. “Attagirl,” we all said. That is a brave decision!
Despite all the personal debacle nothing seems to have changed in our friendship. Rather it has just grown stronger and resilient with each passing day. With all the time differences, crazy work schedules, and hardships, although it is hard to find that perfect time when everyone is available but we do our best to stay connected in whatever little ways we can. There is an invisible pact amongst us – We always call on birthdays, irrespective of where we are and what is happening around us. We pick up that phone and dial their number and chat for hours like there is no tomorrow.
All of these instances got me thinking about the intricate bonds that we share with our girlfriends. As women, we all go through a lot of emotional turbulence, and that’s something only another woman can relate to. As we roll through the highs and lows of our life, our girlfriends become our emotional foundation. They are the ones with whom we can laugh, cry, and easily share different facets of our lives without having to think about being judged. A long chat with our girlfriends puts everything from a different perspective and somehow the world becomes a better place to live in again! I am not saying guy friends or our husbands are any less significant. They are precious in every way but then men will be men and detailed stories are not their cup of tea. So I feel girl bonding is like taking a spa vacation because at the end of it you feel like you have stepped into a whole new world!!
Sometimes we joke amongst ourselves that we need to plan a date in the future when we all have to show up no matter what, at a certain place so that we can relive those moments all over again and bring back the magic in our lives. I do believe that we all will get to meet sometime soon, probably when our kids have grown up a little or the crazy life has mellowed down a bit. With that hope tucked in somewhere deep in my soul, every night as I close my eyes, I can see four girls sitting in the park, grey hair all-around their wrinkled face but what would distinguish them from everyone out there would be the crackles of laughter every other minute and the fact that they made it through everything! We may look older and wiser but to each other, we would be just a bunch of friends still in their teens!
This is dedicated to all the lovely women out there!
