Tag Archives: friends

Girl Talk, Life Lessons

Roommates

Whenever I speak about them, I don’t call them my friends.  Our relationship is special and it needs a qualifier to describe who they are and what they mean to me.  So I refer to them as my old roommates because living together made us closer than friends, and more like family.  Even though it’s been many years since we last lived together, this still holds true.

We met as grad students at Emerson College.  All three of us came from the New York-New Jersey area and were new to Boston.  The close quarters of grad school housing only helped our friendship to flourish.  At the end of the year, another New Yorker joined us, and the four of us moved off-campus.  Our new digs, a railroad-style apartment, was much larger, but in need of a major face-lift.  As young women living in the city, we didn’t mind residing in a self-proclaimed student slum.  We were too busy having fun.

Graduations and jobs inevitably ended our time of living together.  My roommates left Massachusetts – for New York, New Jersey, and New Mexico, while I found a cute studio apartment and stayed in Boston.  Although we often go for long periods of time without seeing one another, we stay in close contact.

Last winter, New York was the first of the roommates to visit me in my new home, arriving only a few weeks after I’d moved in.  She could see beyond the bare walls and the pile of cartons in every room, to what it would become with time.  And her enthusiasm for me was palpable.

In early November, New Jersey and New Mexico came to town for a conference and stayed with me for a couple of nights.  My first over-night guests since the big home reno was completed.  This symbolism was not lost on me.

We talk, we text.  And when I’m lucky enough to spend time with any of these three amazing women, we don’t miss a beat.  Time and age do not matter.  We feel as if we’ve never lived apart.  I’m sure we always will.

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Life Lessons

Give Me a Ring

Give me a ring, okay?  No, not that kind of ring!  I’m not looking for bling, or a proposal.  I just want to talk – have a convo – a good, old-fashioned phone call.  Remember those?

As a teenager, I holed up in my bedroom after dinner, chatting on the phone with my friends, even though I’d seen them all day at school.  During college, the frequent calls with my family helped to ease the miles apart.  The giddy calls with boyfriends – “you hang up first,” “no you hang up first” – and the angst-filled conversations with would-be-could-be-might-be-boyfriends were something else.  Over the years, I’ve treasured the out-of-the-blue calls from far-away friends and favorite cousins I don’t see nearly as often as I’d like.  Whenever I place a call that I know will brighten someone else’s day, it gives me a lift, too.

Clearly, the e-mail and the text message have changed the way we communicate and those “the phone’s just been ringing off the hook!” days seem gone forever.  I don’t have anything against emailing or texting.  Each has merit.  The email can relay a large chunk of information quickly, and seamlessly.  And nothing beats a text when you’re running late to meet someone and you need to let them know.

But this past week, I got on the phone.

First, I placed a long-distance call to an old college friend. He and I caught up and reminisced, and an hour went by in a flash.  Then, a long-overdue call to a friend who lives only a few miles away but whose demanding work life, like mine, has limited her leisure time.  Our talk was validating and restorative.  And finally, I checked in on a friend I haven’t seen in nearly a year but who’s been on my mind lately.  When she shared with me the sad news that her father recently passed away, I tried to offer comfort, and wished I’d called sooner.

Remember that old television commercial for the phone company?  The tag line was “reach out and touch someone.”  I used to think it was corny.  Now, not so much.

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