Sometimes my girlfriends come home for Christmas, sometimes they don't.

Marriage and jobs have taken them away from the corner of the world we call home - southern California, but when they are here we make fabulous plans to see each other, get together, watch our kids play - and with all due self-respect, not ruminate over "glory days" - we make fabulous plans to just "be", no saccharine attemtps at small talk or filling in the blanks because we're way past that - no disparaging remarks about people who have come and gone because we're comfortable with ourselves and our lives - no playing the good mommy olympics (credit my publisher Nancy for that line) so as to impress each other with our maternal and personal evolution - we can just "be".  It's a good feeling, and I miss it when they go, but son of a bitch, I even miss it when they are here.

Why is it that when my girlfriends come to town from all over the continental United States where their husbands have jobs and family that somehow, sometimes, we don't make the most out of our time together?  Opportunities come and go, and at the end of the day, I think, am I a bad friend?  Am I apathetic about relationships in my mid (okay, beginning of my latter half) thirties?  I could make a huge rationalization here, but this morning I am happy to say I believe it is closer to truth - acceptance of all things spoken and unspoken, done and undone is what makes a friendship.  I am who I am, you are who you are, if you don't answer or I don't get back to you, you know I love you, and that whatever circumstances keep us from the proverbial holiday visit - my kids playing football in the street with neighbors, miraculously losing auditory recognition of my beckoning voice, being buried under two feets of cardboard boxes and wrapping paper, cooking a potato galette or pumpkin cheesecake, the family you must see during the few short days before you fly back to your frozen tundra and everyday life, or the job that took you away years ago...those are the same things that bond me to you and you to me. 

Back in our early twenties we may have taken it personally (and I think we did, didn't we?), but time passes and leaves you with the people meant to surround you, even if they have to do it with an invisible arms' reach that stretches for thousands of miles.  With experience and surprise, we discuss the permanence and impermanence of all things - which is a subtle way of telling each other...hm, how can I not sound like a Hallmark card here...that we are to each other a warm bowl of mac and cheese on a a cold day, a chilled glass of spiked somethin somethin at the beach mid-summer.

I love you guys - and you know who you are.  Here or there, it's all the same.

Merry Christmas.

Sam