My new friend
My new friend is tall and dark and elegantly wiry: If I were to cast her in an old movie, she’d be Gene Tierney or Ava Gardner. First thing in the morning, she drinks tea instead of coffee. She has raised four children, but still has the restless energy of a teenager. She likes making things with her hands, and is good with gadgets like a man. As far as I can tell, she is almost always in a good mood. When she laughs, which is often, it’s so hard she cries.
In short, we could not be more different. But the most amazing thing has happened. After years of circling each other as passing acquaintances with kids in the same schools, exchanging pleasantries at parent/teacher nights and children’s birthday parties, we now speak to each other almost every day. Or we email funny stories and pictures back and forth of our kids, our work, the trials and tribulations of midlife marriages and home renovations.
Friday mornings, we meet at yoga, and afterwards we go out for coffee. She has hooked me on Swedish clogs (we now have identical pairs, in different sizes — hers are bigger) and chocolate-ginger cookies. After she once dropped off a tower of coffee-table books for me to flip through when I was sick, we developed a routine of exchanging favourite art books and DVDs. When we find a free afternoon, we meet for lunch and go gallery hopping.
And this past February, after she sold her house and decided to skip a couple of months of snow by splurging on a rental villa on her own on the island of St. Martin (having grown up in the southern hemisphere, she can’t do winter), I was as delighted as a 16-year-old with a new BFF when she asked me to come down and stay for a whole week.
