Friendship Tour
Reconnecting, making the most of working from home, and a new section on rejected works.
This Just In: vibrant, (usually) confident single woman with no children vacillates between shameless proud acceptance and shameless bitter resentment…
Dearest readers, I was having a Lisa Needs Braces Moment1 when finally my therapist asked why I don’t pack a bag and just go see some of these friends I’m always taking about. Do they have WiFi? Wouldn’t they love to see you, she asked.
I highly recommend doing a something tour — it could be visiting friends you haven’t seen in years, or just to check out cool new bookstores from cooler people you follow online. Take the trips you want to take because you want to take them. I had a great time visiting my friends, working from a home that wasn’t mine (the thing about working from home for me is that there’s always something to be done — laundry, cleaning, rearranging furniture, dance party with the pup), getting to witness the evolution of a person, a relationship, how they engage with the world…
I guess you could say I spent my summer doing research. I called it The Friendship Tour.
I spent July and August visiting my besties from college and graduate school, Dawn and Ashley. They are both mothers to wonderful girls. When I get all high and mighty about what I am or am not in society’s eyes I am ignoring the lived realities of those closest to me. The ones that generously offer me witness to their own evolutions.
Dawn and I met as silly eighteen year old girls newly arrived to New York University (she was at The Tisch School of the Arts while I attended The Gallatin School of Individualized Study). It was 2000 NYC, still gritty with lots of chatter around the MTA fare going up from $1.50 to $2. The first time we hung out Dawn mentioned concern about being out after 10pm. By the time we graduated she was a known friendly face around most of Soho and the Village. We drank wine, ate crepes, and sometimes she’d treat us to her delicious fried chicken made in our teeny NYU studio kitchenette. We walked miles and miles in the poisonous air that Tuesday, September 11, 2001. We smoked, we quit, we started again. We met each others families and became one of our own. After college, we both had fancy jobs in Times Square (I was at Vogue, she was at HBO) and we would have liquid lunches at the Chipotle at Bryant Park.
I’m pretty sure we both got fired on the same day, too.
Of course, life happens and takes us where we need to go. When I got into graduate school, Dawn rode with me to read the directions off Mapquest so I could check out my new digs in Cambridge. She moved on back to Atlanta and not long after she gave me the honor of being her daughter’s godmother.
I spent a week with Dawn and her daughters this past August and it was amazing and humbling to see her corral and nurture her girls. She is a mom’s mom — the kind that will be in conversation with you, driving in crazy Atlanta traffic, and still manage to quickly check her girls in the backseat to stop it. Yet, true to form, the very first thing Dawn did when I got to Atlanta was take me to a cafe with live jazz featuring Malcolm Jamal Warner. Everyone at the cafe knew her or knew people she knew, including two guys who were introduced only as “The Brothers.” The Brothers smoked all night and talked about how amazing my friend is. I know.
I first met Ashley in August of 2006 during admit weekend for Harvard’s African and African American Studies PhD Program. She was going to do her doctorate in History. I was there for Literature. The kickoff to the weekend started at a dinner at the department chair’s house. Neither of us yet knew the social dynamics of academia. We definitely didn’t know the cosmopolitan European style of having multiple drinks before the actual dinner. I think it was the first time I actually had Prosecco. We both panicked over getting too lit at our first grad school event.
Ashley and I were fast besties because we simply didn’t understand why being an academic meant not being cute or why it was weird to study the Hegelian Master/Slave Dialectic with Maury Povich or Judge Mathis playing in the background. We passed notes in class and bonded over painful mom stories (hers having passed away from breast cancer, mine recovering from clinical depression and starting her life over 3000 miles away in California). We spent many a night discussing the racist patriarchy, the contradictions we face as little Black girls, and even as young women when seeking higher degrees (i.e. the expectation that we’ll meet our future spouses, as if that is the actual goal). She was there when I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and when I decided to get sober. She was a friend who experienced me at my worst. And stayed by my side.
I got to witness her fall in love with and marry her best friend, and actively choose to be a wife and mother. It’s a rarity to watch someone’s evolution into motherhood. To see someone transform their concerns or ambivalence into a positive commitment without losing herself. Her story is not mine to tell but know that it is a privilege to see someone lean into doubt and become a brighter version of herself. Visiting her and her husband’s home this past July was a total delight (we went to the Missy Elliott concert which was great but the real star was Busta Rhymes who skipped on stage and did cartwheels. I love him). Her husband was born an old dad so he was right at home in his slides with a grill in the backyard. And she is an award-winning author, tenured professor, advocate, leader, and an activist…who is also a mother to a ridiculously talkative toddler who reads her for filth before 8 am. And, no, there’s no resentment here. When someone’s living their decisions authentically it’s actually infectious. It makes you feel honored to be in their life.
I mean, I’m still cynical about the rest of the world but, basically my friends are dope.
—
When we praise working from home we talk about the joys of not having a commute or not having to worry about what to wear or the fact that we can manage our home duties while still being productive. But there are some intangibles I deeply miss. Call it the comraderie of the commute but I got something out of being around other people on my way to work. I don’t miss actual driving in a car but I admit I’m someone who loves taking public transit. And I loved when I was taking the bus or the subway to my jobs. I’m not a friendly chatty person, I kept to myself usually. But that shared experience of going from A to B really made an impression. We all had to be there for some reason or other. Sometimes you saw the same faces, you always recognized the same drivers, and would smile and say hello.
One of the worst things we’ve managed to achieve in our society is the disdain for taking the bus. I’ll never understand why people look at me sideways about it. It’s better for the environment than everyone in their cars, it’s something we all pay for, and it connects community. But I digress.
Ambivalence is exhausting and a waste of time. So, instead of spending more time regretting what isn’t, I looked up and across at the people I value in my life who made different decisions.
I still subscribe too much to what someone like me should be doing. I should make plans for the holidays and the summer. I should be dating in search of a life partner. I should be having children or at least wanting to have had them. I also spend way too much time insta-scrolling and envying folks on their pretty trips in their digital nomad life. I also spend way too much time feeling like a bad friend who doesn’t reach out or visit enough. Did I mention I work from home, that my job is completely remote, and we have folks working from all over the world? I was not allowing myself to just travel for the sake of it. I was seeking permission because my notions of allowed travel had to involve a family member or romantic partner or had to be work-related or during the holidays.
But each time I try something new I do a little more of that work to wrest apart the shoulds from my self-worth.
All I need to do is keep creating my own itineraries.
I highly recommend it.
—
Finally, dear readers, I continue to have a hard season of Nos and kind passes from lit journals. I’m toying with the idea of having a paid option for my rejected stories. The thing with submissions is most places won’t accept anything already published and that includes newsletters or blogs. But I submit because I want my stories and essays out in the world. Ideally, I’d like for them to be shared via prestigious literary platforms but, perhaps the middle ground is one where I post stories after they’ve been passed a certain number of times. Because, after awhile, it starts to feel like I’m giving them too much power over what gets to be out in these spaces. Just because they didn’t want to publish them doesn’t mean somebody doesn’t want to read them.
What do you think? We can talk about it next time.
Yours,
L
just replace “Lisa needs braces” and “Dental plan” with “I don’t think I’m connecting enough with my friends” and “I can work from anywhere!”
This visiting your faves idea is stellar. I may do some visiting of faves.