NORTHERN COMFORT

Who says that all girls are catty? In all honesty, I admit that we women all have the potential to be. I’ve learned in recent years that the reason behind a lot of women’s inherent feline behavior is competition; the underlying desire to be prettier, smarter, wittier than their fellow gendermates. The unconscious pageantry of ego can be fierce, when ladies of all shapes and sizes, levels of humor, intelligence and abilities inhabit the same area at the same time, vying for the attention of the same audience. There are moments when such circumstances make for amusing conversational whispers. But there are other moments when a group of girls can sit in the same room and be who they are intended to be: really good friends. Our weekend up north proved this much to me.

In an effort to remain in touch with each other’s busy lives, a Circle Of Friends I know get together for one weekend each year to remember old times, re-connect with each other’s souls, re-forge their fragmented life stories and re-assess their futures. It only takes one warm embrace of fondness and a single shrill of laughter to bring it all back.

This year our circle spent the weekend in Northern California. A day in beautiful Napa Valley, wine-tasting, eating, driving and shopping couldn’t have been a more appropriate backdrop for the ladies who, since 2000, are no longer the roxy t-shirt-wearing, backpack-toting, boy-band-loving, all-night-clubbing group they once were. Thankfully, other than these former idiosyncratic tendencies from the collegiate and post-collegiate years, not much else has changed; for although the words “career, marriage and family” penetrated our weekend conversations, so too did brand new inside jokes and old memories…

Memories such as our effort to keep track of each other’s presence in Vegas 3 years ago. We “count off” from, you guessed it, eldest to youngest.

Here we are, a lovely group. But now it's time for --