I was in a writers’ group for many years. The group originated with four first year MFA students, four young women, two with curly hair, two with straight hair. We were all in our twenties and single, all differently but similarly struggling through. We wrote and we shared and we fought and we adored each other. Over the years, the group changed composition until the final iteration before we fizzled included four women, whose particulars were much less similar to one another in all those same age and same marital status ways. There was more easy love, though, as if those different places meant we could travel across footpaths toward one another rather than all be stuck at the same point on the trail.
Our foursome met this past weekend, a mini-reunion of sorts. Listening to Paula, who lives in Los Angeles now, talk about her current writing project, the way research for it pulled her—from an old letter to figuring out how a young woman might have climbed up the ‘H’ of the Hollywood sign to end her life, to Joe Kennedy’s exploits in the film industry—reminded me of how much I have always admired her willingness to go wherever a story takes her. She’s researched so many things in such depth it’d make many academics’ minds hurt and what’s more she’s become an accomplished gardener and a visual artist as well. I first met Paula in graduate school, the wonderfully intense Warren Wilson College (intense for its ten-day residencies, the smash up of so many passionate folks thrown into one place for a short period of time).
One of the big gifts of Warren Wilson for me is my friendship with Paula and one of the big gifts of that friendship is my friendship with her lovely, talented daughter, Ilana, herself a fantastic photographer. I first met Ilana when she was a bright and eager-to-hide-and-play seven year-old. Ilana’s 26 now and she follows her ideas for photo stories with a similar willingness to dive in and try modeled by her mama. I hadn’t really thought of how much so until yesterday hearing about Paula’s time travel to the 1930’s and her checking out obscure Hollywood actors’ old houses. Oh, I thought, I totally get why and how Ilana will go where she goes, be it under Grand Central station, into teenagers’ somewhat secretive universes, or across the globe. Part of the gift Paula gave me—and not only Paula, others in my life, too—is this; she has friends of various ages and whose lives are not exactly hers. It seems so obvious that having friends whose lives span time and experience is richer and more satisfying than all standing in the same spot on the trail. This is true of the rest of our writers’ foursome, Christian and Edite. But I’m not sure it always is clear in people’s daily lives.
Even as my toddler begins to step out into the world a bit more, I see that my parenting-acquired friendships will, because they kind of must, span more than a generation. I have friends with kids my oldest kid’s age whose other kids are in college and I have friends now with my youngest kid’s age whose youngest kids are newborns.
Anyway, over the past few years, our friendship with Ilana has its own very full, fun, lovely life of its own. I say “our” on purpose, because she has close ties with each member of our clan. She’s Saskia’s godmother and she’s become a buddy of Ezekiel, age 14 and a late night supper companion with dear hubby and a welcome face for Lucien and Remy when she pops into town. So, what our two families share now is a richness of friendships that aren’t limited by sameness of age or station in life. It’s the kind of depth I can only feel grateful for—and indeed, I do.
