I haven't driven this far-too-familiar route between Brattleboro and New York since the month of hell (aka March) finally ended. Part of me never wanted to drive it again, and part of me really didn't care since I can drive it in my sleep. 91 to the Merritt Pkwy. Merritt to the Hutch. Hutch to the Whitestone Bridge and then onto the Bruckner.
Except this time I took the Bruckner to the BQE (that's the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, aka the Cheating Death Everytime Highway) and flew past my old house, continuing on to Brooklyn where two of my closest friends from college awaited my (late) arrival. They moved to the city just after I did, through total serendipity, and they're both about to move away. This past weekend was quite possibly the last time we'll all be together for a long time, much less in New York. So, as good college friends do, we celebrated our together-ness with margaritas.
And as many women our age can probably relate to, we spent most of the time competing for who has recently come across the most bizarre factoids about health and the body, mostly women's health stuff (yeah yeah, ewwww). (Though, because of the sketchy company I've been keeping lately, my weird women's health fact actually had to do with the reproductive systems of goats, because I was at my cousin's farm in upstate New York recently when one of her goats gave birth to twins.)
Let's be clear, here. We are NOT discussing our reproductive systems because we plan on using them anytime soon. We're more like halfway between high school health class and the dinging of our biological alarm clocks - we're old enough to learn and actually discuss really useful (or just fascinating) information, and young enough for this information to kind of gross us out ("my ovaries might WHAT??"). We're old enough to have watched a number of our friends marry and even have babies, and young enough for that to be totally freaky (well, except that one of the friends I was with is married herself).
It was therefore validating and ironic and lovely to spend Saturday with five good friends, three of whom are married (two of those to one another), and two adorable little baby boys (belonging to the married people). I'd never met the boys before, and it's a little tough to describe how I felt about this sudden babyness everywhere. They are beatiful and adorable and perfect, like all babies. They are also unpredictable and drooly and gross. Ten years ago I would have been terrified of the little creatures, and five years ago I would have felt some aversion and some indifference. This weekend I felt warmth and patience and not a little awe. I felt, dare I say it, really comfortable holding a baby in my arms. And perfectly happy to give the baby back to his mother.
It was validating to know that I could feel natural holding a baby and feel happy and comfortable letting it go. Yes, that could be right for me someday and I might even be good at it. No, that day isn't coming anytime soon, if I can help it (AHEM, no thanks to my health insurance provider).
But aren't the CUTE?
After the day with the babies we fought traffic back to the city and went out for a yummy dinner. On Sunday I sat in Prospect Park and called a bunch of people to say "hey, I'm in the city, come sit in the park with me!" which a lovely number of people actually did. We whiled away the beautiful afternoon, until I absolutely had to get back in my car and fight the end-of-the-weekend, leaving-the-city traffic to come home.
It was a perfect weekend in the Big Apple: I enjoyed what the city has to offer and saw some of the people I love best in the world, and I was so happy at the end of it to come back to my happy hippie valley in Vermont. There is no good Mexican food here, but there are lovely friends to discuss my reproductive system with, enough babies around to keep me from forgetting that talking about it is all I want to do with it for a long time, and enough potlucks and dances to feel totally socially fulfilled by my current single life no matter what most of society tries to tell me I *should* feel about it. The universe is giving me a lot of validation right now, and most of the time I'm remembering to be grateful.
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