Ode To Girlfriends

As many of you know I lived with my In-laws basement for a little over a year...and SURVIVED! Once a month I would go out to dinner with my girlfriends. One such night I forgot to spread the word in the Smith family household that I was going to be out that night. I arrived home at 3 A.M. to find the lights out, the door locked and my phone dead. Feeling quite sheepish that I had stayed out so late I nearly decided to bed down on the deck, rather than go knocking on the door and alerting anyone to my late night shenanigans. Being me I just couldn't do it though. I imagined wild dogs sniffing me out and dragging me back to the Tremonton wilds for dinner.

I then made like Tom Cruise and went on Mission Impossible - finding an alternative entryway into the house. My first move was to try to make my way through the rose garden to the window of our bedroom and knocking on the window until my husband woke up. I couldn't get through that rose jungle without seriously scratching myself, and besides I still didn't want my husband to know I'd been out so late. Finally with spy music playing in my mind I entered the storage room beneath the deck and then through the spider infested loose window into another storage room before opening the door and sneaking past my brother-in-law sleeping on the couch. The next morning I confessed to the whole thing anyway. My mother-in-law (and I truly love her, I do) who has a way of making you feel guilty even if you haven't done anything wrong looked me in the eye and said, "And what were you doing until three in the morning?"

I have many blessings in my life, and if I have any that are especially rare and beautiful it is the love and friendship of a particular group of girls that grew up with me. Deemed simply, The Clarkston Girls, we are a crop of girls born in Clarkston in the 81/82 year. These girls I've known since I was 2. I think my first conversation with many of them went like this:

Them: "Can I pull on your Laura Ingalls pioneer braids?"
Me:"I guess so...as long as you promise to be my friend forever."
Them: "Deal."

And so it began. The answer to my mother-in-laws question was simple, "We were talking." For those who don't have a bunch of girls they've known, competed over boys with, fought with, made up with, gone through ugly awkward stages with, and loved for nearly 26 years it might be hard to fathom how a conversation can begin at 6 P.M. and go strong for another nine hours.

There is something about knowing the same oddball cast of characters from a podunk town and suffering through nearly two hours on a bus every day for thirteen years that really bonds a group of people together. The fact that they know your family, the associated baggage of said family, and witnessed many of your most embarrassing moments from the time you peed your pants during a T-Ball game at age six, to the time you decided wearing white pants was a good idea while you were on your period and the whole darn cast of Martin Harris: The Man Who Knew probably was privy to watching you skip around the stage singing and oblivious to your painfully apparent faux pas.

They don't look at you funny when you call the post office, THE mail, or shake in your boots over the mere mention of the local horror myth Swish-Swash. They don't judge you over the hours you've spent driving on the back roads, wading in City Creek (Creek being pronounced Crick) the mucky stinky stuff between your toes either being decaying plant life or cow manure from upstream, or taking a dip in your neighbors new round circular cow trough on a hot summer day. They get just as big of a kick out of watching local kids chase chickens, rabbits and pigs at the annual town celebration Pony Express Days as you do.

Over the years they've encouraged you to date a guy, and then encouraged you to dump him. They have forgiven you when you've said mean things to them during your teen angst years and you've forgiven them. They've stood by you when you've done something idiotic. They've cried with you when your heart was broken, and when something was so funny the tears streamed down your face.

They've known you single. They've known you married. And they've known you pregnant. One day you notice that those girls are no longer girls but women. Not only women, but remarkable ones. Dedicated mothers, compassionate friends and exceptional women. They've defended your weight gain - "Hey, she JUST had a baby. So lay off!" they are courteous enough not to add that that baby is four years old. They tell you your husband must be an idiot if he hasn't noticed lately how gorgeous/talented/smart you are. They love you not out of some sense of familial loyalty but because they choose to love you when they could just stop returning your calls all together.

These are they types of girls that you can have a conversation with for nine hours...and longer...26 years. These are the girls that make the 3 A.M. bed time and the associated I-can't-stay-up-this-late-anymore-I'm-nearly-thirty hangover the next day worth it. Here's to girlfriends, and the to the hope that we'll have another 26 years to talk, laugh and encourage one another. I love you girls, thanks for standing by me!