Getting by with a little help from my friends

Published 2:43 pm Thursday, September 25, 2008

By Staff
On a seemingly standard Saturday night, I strode down the hallway of a country club dining hall and attempted a trip down memory lane.
The high school reunion had finally arrived. I'd spent the week -okay, weeks – leading up to that night cleaning my apartment furiously for weekend guests, high school best friend Sarah and her husband, and preparing an ambitious dinner for 10 of my closest friends.
Still, by Friday afternoon, thanks to the tireless efforts and help from family, the house was clean, paintings hung and the food prepped.
By the time Sarah and her husband were setting their suitcases in the bedroom, I was working on hors d'oeuvres. Soon we were catching up. Our lives since high school moved in different directions, as almost all lives do, but when she tries to convince me she used to beat me in tennis or berates me for my lack of interest in recycling … it's oddly comforting. It's familiar. And I'm learning as I get older to hang on to the familiar in a world filled with … the obscure.
I double-checked the main dish. It was a family favorite my aunt, grandmother and I had put together the night before … four dozen puff pastries filled in three varieties: spinach and onion laced with lemon, ground beef spiced with cinnamon and cumin and finally, a blend of peppery ricotta and sharp cheddar cheeses.
Entertaining always brings out my inner foodie. Deep down, I want a stainless steel oven, stovetop and industrial grade kitchen appliances. I'd have a rack filled with spices from around the world and Martha Stewart would be calling me for advice. But I digress…
As my guests arrived and the wine was poured, I shuffled baking sheets between oven racks.
I swung the two and a half-year-old daughter of one of my oldest friends, Kim into the air and laughed as she stuffed her little face with pumpkin bread. And while I rushed around checking plates and putting on high school home videos, I watched as my friends split up into smaller groups and different conversations. And I felt like an atom split up into neurons or … whatever makes up an atom.
'They' always say your circle of friends becomes smaller albeit closer, as you get older. The night before I went back to the days when the face of friendship was as wide as the winding high school hallways, I surveyed my apartment and the people in it. I loved my friends, but I couldn't help but feel as though I wasn't connecting to any of them.
I wondered about image. Or more specifically, the person I was becoming while I was so busy working on one. It all felt so superficial and teenagery.
My best friend, Rachel, tried to calm my nerves Saturday shortly before the reunion as I struggled with hair and wardrobe and expectations.
When we got to the club, my former teenage self was staring me in the face. The nametags had been affixed with our senior photos – and let's just say mine wasn't too flattering. I stuffed it into my pocket and made my way to the bar.
The gin was polite and friendly. And I am not one to be rude. Inside the club, friends of old circulated and looked the same and older all at once. I wish I could say I wasn't nervous or self-conscious, but I was.
The weekend was over relatively quickly and with minimal pain. Before I knew it, Sarah and her husband were back in Baltimore and everything was back to normal. Meaning – I was bombarded with thoughts of who I was and who I'd become.
Let's face it – I'm a rapidly depleting twenty-something in the prepping stages of thirty-somethingness. I'm a writer. I have a love affair with introspection. I think. A lot.
And I think that as we grow up, we have to hang on to those people we trust with the pieces of us that only they know. We may stand on a foundation of family. Tuck memory safely away into boxes and scrapbooks. Leave our adolescence to nametags and awkward reunions.
But when we feel lost, we find our shelter in the familiarity of our friends, who remind us with every dinner, every phone call, every long over-due visit – just who we are. We all try to create an image as we struggle to be grown up. But our friends see past the glossy airbrushing – to the flaws and imperfections. And they love us anyway. And sometimes – it's the only thing that helps us love ourselves, a little bit more.