The older I get, the more I value my female friends. We have become a sisterhood of survivors — survivors of wild escapades in our long-ago youth, whose memories evoke both pride and retroactive terror; of breakups, bad decisions and betrayals that required cocktails and consolation in equal parts; of health scares and loved ones’ deaths and so many years that we hardly recognize ourselves in the mirror.
Through it all, our friendships endure.
In the past, when I pictured myself aging, it always involved a scenario straight out of the classic “Golden Girls” TV sitcom: sharing a big house with my two best friends and my younger sister.
Of course we’d be far less bitchy than the sitcom’s quartet of older women, and we’d live in a wood-frame Victorian in Key West instead of the show’s generic Miami home. Since we’re all leftover hippies, our household vibe would be commune-like instead of “Golden Girls” suburban.
The basic premise, however, would remain the same — four women living together and supporting each other unconditionally through life’s later-years troubles and triumphs.
In Key West, there’s a quiet kinship among women who survived the anything-goes days of the late 1970s and early ’80s. We might not have been close friends back then, and we probably competed for some of the same men. Now, however, there’s an unspoken and unbreakable bond between us.
We shared a rare era of experiences that burned us and shaped us, and adventures we wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. We’re rueful and wrinkled and slower than we used to be. We bear a few scars — some visible and some unseen.
But thanks to sheer luck and grace, we’re still here.
There’s a subtle comfort in spending time with women who knew you “back in the day” — who understand your story and your struggles. When a new challenge rears its head, they don’t need a complicated explanation to realize why you’re falling apart. They just show up.
That’s what my female friends did five years ago, when my husband David passed away after a brave battle with cancer.
One insisted that we maintain a decades-old tradition of special dinners at her house, and she sat in David’s place at the table so I wouldn’t have to face an empty chair. One kept appearing at my door, bringing homemade soup and plants for me to nurture. One stayed with me whenever she was in town, suggesting movie nights and projects and shopping trips that helped fill the strangely hollow hours.
My younger sister checked in every day for months, becoming an inspiration for positive living in difficult circumstances. Half a dozen women from my wild-child past sent notes and invitations — even though I hadn’t seen them for years, despite living on the same island.
Slowly, thanks to undemanding support from all of them, I built a new life.
A year ago, I took part in an onstage forum with several women friends from “back in the day” — brought together by Tony “Fat” Yaniz to tell stories about our adventurous pasts, when Key West was a town of freewheeling outlaws and escapees from the mainstream.
The audience listened, enthralled, as we spun tales of pot smuggling and pirate lovers, improbable experiences and unforgettable characters.
At the end, the applause was fervent — but it didn’t feel like the simple acknowledgement of a nice evening. It felt like appreciation for the era we’d lived through, and the women we had (somehow) become.
In the literal sense, my vision of a “Golden Girls” situation, a group of female friends sharing one comfortable home, probably won’t come true. But in the metaphorical sense, it already has.
We might not inhabit a sprawling Victorian house together, but we inhabit an island. Our addresses are different, but we look after each other like roommates anyway — pooling resources, trading recommendations for books and massage therapists, enjoying lunches and laughter.
We accompany each other to scary medical appointments. We meet for art openings and trivia nights, and fill in for absent family members.
Enduring friendships can be messy. There are arguments and forgiveness, pauses and resumptions in communication. Yet even after surface disturbances, when the chips are down, we show up for each other.
Somehow, despite death-defying exploits when we were young and crazy, we survived. Decades later, in honor of that survival, we forged an unexpected and wonderful sisterhood … and I will never stop being grateful for it.
