The luckiest feeling is being in a foursome of girls well into your late thirties. It’s just after six at night when I walk into my longest friend’s new home, and it’s the third time I’m seeing it, but it still makes my eyes widen in appreciation. Vaulted ceilings, color-drenched rooms (I slept in an all-plum room) with wainscoting, and a built-in custom bar I imagine myself at every weekend. Two of the four of us are new moms with one-year-olds only a month apart. We were supposed to get dressed up and go to a rooftop bar, but I had to go and get my face fucked by a Morpheus / Cold Peel combination, and in my desperation to not be seen but to still be socialized, I beg off for a comfy gathering instead. Then came the beautiful messages of compromise, half out of eagerness to see my face, half out of eagerness to skip a bar tab and stay in pajamas.
When I grabbed my seat at the island, I drank in the company (and the incredible assortment of food) as I was passed a skinny champagne flute and felt genuinely at ease. The luckiest feeling is being part of a foursome of girls into your late thirties, all who understand and respect one another. Our differences are easy to spot in our choice of pajamas. Me, not entirely a jammy-outside-of-my-bedroom kind of girl, showing up in a tight black T-shirt dress with a red-orange unzipped oversized hoodie. Ali, in the prettiest periwinkle matching set, soft-lined fabric, with a bun on the top of her head in a matching silk scrunchie. Sara, in a baggy black T-shirt and gray joggers, often resisting the ultra-feminine, but never in a pick-me way. Jenny, in a matching button-down short-sleeved shirt and shorts with horizontal stripes, salmon and a lighter shade of muted peach. We are all equally soft and sure and easy with each other.
We try not to read the opposite sex to filth, but it inevitably happens. We talk about books. Being an antisocial mom vs. a social one (Sara balks at mom groups, Jenny embraces them), we insist we must go make candles again. But my favorite moment is when I read out the effects of seven planets being in Aries, and we laugh like mad over the absurdity of astrology, and my seriousness with it. In my mind I am the queen of the cosmos as I interrupt them one more time to say, “This is very important!” before telling them what it all means. A new moon in Aries and seven planets crowded there too?! I tell them it’s a pileup of fire and first chances, of becoming yourself again, of acting before fear can make way for reason. Why exactly is it consequential? Because sometimes the stars say begin, even like this. But I’ve already shifted into making it more funny than it is real. Because it is funny, to take that kind of thing seriously. Unless you really want to.
When Sara and Jenny leave, Ali and I keep drinking on her back porch. We’ve been best friends for almost twenty years. She is the fire to my air. We laugh at everything and nothing, and we hold hands when she tells me, “You’re so beautiful. You deserve so much.” I pull her wrist up and make her touch my face and neck, which feels like sandpaper. “How is that for beauty?!” I say.
She says, “Shut the fuck up. It’s all temporary.”
The luckiest feeling is being part of a foursome of girls into your late thirties, and having one girl among them who has seen you through it all.
Thoughts?