To the Januarys
I’m not sure where all my nostalgia and sentimentality is coming from recently. Maybe it’s the impending 10 year High School reunion, coupled with the fact that my younger sister will be graduating high school the same year. Maybe it’s the recent passing of a high school classmate. Not just a classmate really but someone who was once my best friend. Maybe it’s the reality that I’m moving on to a part of my life where the focus is more on the children of my friends than my actual friends themselves. A new chapter. Most of all I think it’s the fact that turning 30 really is just around the corner, and now it doesn’t sound as old or as dreadful as it used to. Whatever started it, sitting down to read the last installment of the Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants kicked it into overdrive. The fact that I waited more than a year to pull it out and read it after it is was given to me only further demonstrates how much like Lena I truly am. Sometimes finding yourself in a character is exciting but often times it forces you to confront things you’d rather not.
I stopped reading for pleasure years ago, for more than one reason, chief of which is that I have little to no self control when I pick up a book. It is very hard to put it down until I finish it. This book though I put off for a different reason. It took me two days (reading at what felt an excruciatingly slow pace) to finish Sisterhood Everlasting. I knew that whatever goodness it brought there would be sadness too and I wasn’t ready for it. You see many years ago when I first met Lena, Bridgett, Carmen & Tibby they were young, like me, and now neither they nor I would be quite as young. Seeing them become adults meant, that just like with every other step of their lives, I would have to grow with them. There were so many questions about their lives that I honestly wasn’t sure I wanted an answer for. Forever in Blue had a good ending, their story was complete, tied up in a little bow. They managed to keep their friendship even when they couldn’t keep the pants. The message was clear and they could go on to lead their lives that would end Happily Ever After. Or at least I could pretend it was Happily Ever After. Having another installment so long after the original series could only mean one thing...it wasn’t Happily Ever After. Of course it wasn’t, the sisterhood had never been about happy endings but about harsh realities we are often too afraid to face. Often time the sisterhood forced us to face death itself. Not just death but desthvthat came too soon. Bridget's mother to suicide, Tibby’s unlikely friend, Bailey to childhood cancer, and now...well I won’t ruin it for you. It happens all the time, and even when we think we’ve accepted it we realize we haven’t. It always shocks us and shakes our foundation. We think about all the things they have left undone, all the people they have left behind, all the future events we expected to see them at that they won’t be there for. We always think there’s going to be a “next time.”
Growing up I walked step in step with the Septembers and I would have to walk here too. Just like Lena I had three best friends and we even had a seemingly magical pair of pants to share, except we would have to be the Januarys. I don’t even know who read the book first, but like most books it made it’s way through our circle at record speed. It was startling really how much each of us identified with a certain character. Again like Lena, I was born first, so while she isn’t quite a September I am not quite a January. Unlike Sisterhood Everlasting I haven’t lost one of the Januarys, that’s something I can’t even begin to think about. What I did take from this installment of their lives was not to let life get in the way of friendship, but also not to pause life for fear of change. Life is for living, not for waiting.
They say that a friendship that lasts 7 years will last a lifetime. Well we passed the 7 year mark a long time ago, almost before real life even began. Someone once told me “That’s not how friendship works” when I said my best friend(s) didn’t live in the same city as me. That’s not to say that I don’t have good friends nearby, or even best friends at this point, but at the time those relationships were still new. No-my best friends lived hours and even states away, because friendship status isn’t determined by your zip code. It’s determined by the first person you call when something goes terribly wrong, or terribly right. It’s determined by who tells you the truth no matter how hard it is to hear, and who texts you on a Tuesday just to check-in without actually needing anything. It’s determined by who sits through an hour long phone conversation about whether or not your lamps match the rest of your decor, even when they’ve never seen them in person.
Throughout life you’ll go through many stages of friendship, there’s your high school friends, your college friends, your co-worker friends, you’re married couple friends, you’re parent friends and on it goes. A best friend isn’t necessarily a single person but more like a rank, or status. Gaining new friends, even best friends, doesn’t eliminate those who came before. But it’s your high school friends who understand you in a way that others don’t. It’s because they were there for those first big events that began to shape you into who you are. Events like your first date, and first break-up. They celebrated with you and brought you your favorite junk food when it felt like your world was falling apart (french fries and ranch are still the best indulgence). They listened to you complain about the “new” skinny jean trend while you swore you’d never own a single pair, and they didn’t judge you when two years later skinny jeans became the only ones in your wardrobe. They know why you turned out the way you did even when you can’t fully explain it yourself.
So many things have changed since we first started our journey with the Septembers. We've seen first loves turn into husbands and others just turn out to be lousy. We’ve seen goals achieved and plans changed. The key is not being afraid of change, letting it happen, and learning how to continue on. When you see each other every day it’s easy to be friends (it’s also easier to find something to fight about). The real test of a friendship is being able to pick up the phone when you haven’t seen or spoken to each other in weeks, or even months, and knowing they will be there. It can happen, but it does take effort to keep each other in the loop. We’ve been through graduation season, college season, wedding season and now one of us has pulled the rest into baby season (we’ll join you, one day...maybe). Not every friendship is meant to last a lifetime, some are only for a season, it's pretty easy to tell which ones are in it for the long haul.
Like Bon Jovi would say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
