sound.
We hung up and I rocked back and forth on the bed, debating how I could communicate to Jesse the absolutely absurd thing I was about to do. Forced to do. When I checked the time and realized he was surely in the middle of a lunchtime training run, I was relieved. It gave me a legitimate reason to deliver the fraught news by text rather than having a full-blown conversation. Now that I’d reluctantly conceded what I had to do to help Margot, I couldn’t have Jesse talking me out of it. Assuring myself that I’d be back on training runs myself in no time, I thumbed out a short, matter-of-fact text.
Margot was sick, I explained. I had to babysit for a few days. To make it easier on everyone (though doubt swirled around my mind as I typed), I’d be bringing the baby back to San Francisco. I concluded with, “It’ll be about a week.”
***
The thing about friends is that though they usually arrive in a limited number of ways — people you meet in school or at work or through mutual friends — eventually they’re slotted into distinct categories. You might have your tennis friends, your meet-once-a-year-for-coffee friends. There are those people you almost never see in person but who nevertheless remain fond friends because you shared a summer camp bunk all through middle school. There are friends who make you think, “I want to be more like her.” There are friends who have such big personalities, who take up so much energetic space that you learn to see them in only the smallest of increments and in the company of others so that they don’t just suck the life out of you. There are friends you confide in too early, revealing your harsh thoughts, your personal secrets, who you later slowly back away from, embarrassed by your disclosures. The friends you text whenever you stumble upon When Harry Met Sally on TV and you watch the rest of the movie together virtually, texting each other the best lines moments after they’re spoken. “Six years later you find yourself singing Surrey with the Fringe on Top in front of Ira.”
And, importantly, friends also get tiered, with fewer and fewer reaching the elite upper ranks. The friends you spend Thanksgiving with, the friends you call when your power goes out and you need a warm place to sleep, the friends you can fart in front of. The friends whose secrets you protect. The friends who helpfully inform you when you’re screwing up your life by settling for that job or that boyfriend. The friends who sing your praises to others when you’re not even there.
Since we met in college, Sarah and I have been each other’s wing woman, speaking by phone at least four times a week, bouncing the smallest and biggest of ideas and concerns off each other. Our texts have become pure shorthand, indecipherable to anyone else. The other day, she pinged me, “TJs. Uptown Girl. 4 hours. Ack.” And only I could clearly understand that to mean that Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl plagued her as an annoying ear worm since she heard it while shopping at Trader Joe’s four hours earlier.
Sarah and I had come to have a sixth sense about the other’s needs. Although I couldn’t relate to her experience with motherhood, the slightest lilt in her voice one morning shortly after Lily was born told me that even though it was just eight in the morning, she was already struggling to stay awake. So on my way to work, I stopped by her house bearing her favorite “half-caf” latte as well as two packages of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and the latest issue of US magazine. When she opened the door and I handed her the goodies, her drowsy eyes filled with grateful tears.
I was as close to Sarah as I was to Margot — they were certainly both in the same tier, my highest — but in a wholly different way. I didn’t see or talk to Margot nearly as often, but she was my history. She lived with me at Egan Academy at a time when my sense of self developed and then peaked. In fact, it was she who
We hung up and I rocked back and forth on the bed, debating how I could communicate to Jesse the absolutely absurd thing I was about to do. Forced to do. When I checked the time and realized he was surely in the middle of a lunchtime training run, I was relieved. It gave me a legitimate reason to deliver the fraught news by text rather than having a full-blown conversation. Now that I’d reluctantly conceded what I had to do to help Margot, I couldn’t have Jesse talking me out of it. Assuring myself that I’d be back on training runs myself in no time, I thumbed out a short, matter-of-fact text.
Margot was sick, I explained. I had to babysit for a few days. To make it easier on everyone (though doubt swirled around my mind as I typed), I’d be bringing the baby back to San Francisco. I concluded with, “It’ll be about a week.”
***
The thing about friends is that though they usually arrive in a limited number of ways — people you meet in school or at work or through mutual friends — eventually they’re slotted into distinct categories. You might have your tennis friends, your meet-once-a-year-for-coffee friends. There are those people you almost never see in person but who nevertheless remain fond friends because you shared a summer camp bunk all through middle school. There are friends who make you think, “I want to be more like her.” There are friends who have such big personalities, who take up so much energetic space that you learn to see them in only the smallest of increments and in the company of others so that they don’t just suck the life out of you. There are friends you confide in too early, revealing your harsh thoughts, your personal secrets, who you later slowly back away from, embarrassed by your disclosures. The friends you text whenever you stumble upon When Harry Met Sally on TV and you watch the rest of the movie together virtually, texting each other the best lines moments after they’re spoken. “Six years later you find yourself singing Surrey with the Fringe on Top in front of Ira.”
And, importantly, friends also get tiered, with fewer and fewer reaching the elite upper ranks. The friends you spend Thanksgiving with, the friends you call when your power goes out and you need a warm place to sleep, the friends you can fart in front of. The friends whose secrets you protect. The friends who helpfully inform you when you’re screwing up your life by settling for that job or that boyfriend. The friends who sing your praises to others when you’re not even there.
Since we met in college, Sarah and I have been each other’s wing woman, speaking by phone at least four times a week, bouncing the smallest and biggest of ideas and concerns off each other. Our texts have become pure shorthand, indecipherable to anyone else. The other day, she pinged me, “TJs. Uptown Girl. 4 hours. Ack.” And only I could clearly understand that to mean that Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl plagued her as an annoying ear worm since she heard it while shopping at Trader Joe’s four hours earlier.
Sarah and I had come to have a sixth sense about the other’s needs. Although I couldn’t relate to her experience with motherhood, the slightest lilt in her voice one morning shortly after Lily was born told me that even though it was just eight in the morning, she was already struggling to stay awake. So on my way to work, I stopped by her house bearing her favorite “half-caf” latte as well as two packages of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and the latest issue of US magazine. When she opened the door and I handed her the goodies, her drowsy eyes filled with grateful tears.
I was as close to Sarah as I was to Margot — they were certainly both in the same tier, my highest — but in a wholly different way. I didn’t see or talk to Margot nearly as often, but she was my history. She lived with me at Egan Academy at a time when my sense of self developed and then peaked. In fact, it was she who
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