When Friendship Saves Us (Part 3): Our Take on Modern Love
I imagine getting comfortable before take-off on the plane back to England. Putting electronics in flight mode. Fastening my kids’ seat belts. Looking over the in-flight entertainment options with my husband. And then fleeing down the aisle. Stop, wait, don’t close the doors. Then running, running through the airport, the soundtrack kicking in, grabbing a taxi (after someone steals the one I want), to get to her. Amanda. Like the last scene in the romantic comedy, but this time I’m running to my best friend, and like a movie, I know that this is a fiction too.
Watching the end of Book Smart recently, I had a thrill of recognition. About to leave on a gap year to Africa, Amy comes back from Departures to her best friend Molly, for one last pancake, before getting on the flight late. I texted Amanda, “That’s us!!!” And although we’ve never eaten pancakes together and despite the fact that I arrive at the airport three hours in advance and couldn’t possibly be late, we thought that sounded about right.
In my final weeks in California before returning home after 13 years away, I seek out time with Amanda. She overrides my not-yet-filled bucket list. I choose her over the Golden Gate Bridge, over Napa wineries, over Stinson Beach sunsets. I choose barista-style coffee made by her 11-year-old, socially distanced in her garden, over Blue Bottle pulled by hipsters in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. I choose meeting her down by the creek in our little town over a road trip to Lake Tahoe, crossing stepping-stones over a quiet stream rather than riding jet-skis on alpine-fed horizons. In our last days together, I’m aware of making the promises a teenage girl would make to a best friend. “I will love you forever, we will grow old together, our kids will be best friends always.” But this time I mean them with the sincerity of a middle-aged woman who knows what commitment is and what true love can be.
When I met Amanda, the friendship that was designed to blossom was between our sons, both aged five and about to enter the same kindergarten class. It was a practical arrangement and it resulted in the connection we’d hope for our boys. But it was the two of us—with our new baby girls in slings and relentless nursing habits—who found a friendship neither knew we needed. For my daughter Ottilie, now aged 6, Amanda has become her second mum, though she calls her ‘Grandma,’ which befuddles us. Amanda’s daughter Willa is of course her sister-friend and they fight and love each other accordingly. Six years later our sons are like cousins, affectionate but sometimes confused by what connects them, aware only that it has something to do with family. My husband calls Amanda my real partner; she calls herself his wife’s wife.
I’d seen Amanda around town before that first blind playdate. I saw her when she toured the preschool where my son went, but she was Nikki’s friend, unattainably beautiful, and she chose not to go there, so our relationship never began. I saw her again when I was playing in the park and she was walking by, in labor, with her mum. To me, several months pregnant and puking every day, terrified of childbirth and ready to check myself into hospital weeks in advance in case something happened, she seemed a nonchalant goddess who would drop the baby and make magic happen. I felt fumbling and unsure, she looked resolute and dreamy.
In that unexpected way of life, it was Amanda that I would come to share the next years with. We would raise our girls and our boys together—navigating schools and relationships, work and shifting bodies. She taught me how to text with emojis: “It hurts my feelings when you don’t use them.” I learned that nature wasn’t terrifying and that hiking a trail alone did not mean instant murder. She showed me that kind could also mean strong, that humor didn’t need sarcasm, that the fears I had, she had too. I became vegetarian, because she’s vegan and I can get closer to that (though not quite that far). I know now that maple syrup makes everything taste better. I’ve become an unembarrassed fan of all things Disney. She sends me texts at night that I answer in the morning, because I go to bed early and she seems unoffended by that. She takes me to concerts, though live music makes me feel awkward; it’s her happy place and she wants to share it. We tell each other that “we are amazing,” without irony and with joy. Amanda was the first person I hugged post-lockdown.
In our last couple of weeks together during this odd coronavirus-threaded summer, I tread carefully in conversations about home. My husband and I had long contemplated the move back to England after too many trips home ended in tears at Heathrow. My best friend and I had known this was coming; it hung around us like a diagnosis we tried to put aside and that we often forgot. In what we thought would be our last year in San Francisco, the pandemic put paid to our plans and Amanda and I relaxed again into our time together. I realized that I could endure everything that lockdown had removed, except seeing her. That realization hit hard. Then my husband lost his job in the theater, which meant we had nothing to tie us to California. The decision to return home came quickly and forcefully. Moving back to England took on an urgency that neither of us has been prepared for and that I can’t ignore, much as I want to. We’re now down to three weeks and counting, no longer in the maybes and perhapses that chased our time together.
Together yesterday—the girls on the trampoline, the boys wondering what shared activity they could find—I try not to flinch when Amanda mentions a new friend she’s taking daily walks with. Past my house, up through the winding paths of our hill. I imagine them walking by when new people are here in my newly-sold home, saying, “I knew someone who lived there once.” I start to cultivate bruises of loss. But Amanda has taught me in our years together that love is boundless, to be shared. I allow myself to be the better person she believes me to be. “I like Hilary,” I say, “That sounds nice.”
Because I know this too. We are golden: she’s my Anne Parker, my Christina Yang, my Abby Wambach, my Rayya, my Farly, my person. Like women before me, I love my best friend. We have filled a space, begun a story, that women have navigated for centuries: Bringing up children together, finding support through our anxieties, spending hours in whispers and laughs. Making the in-between times count for more than the major moments of our lives.
Sitting on a packed suitcase in what will be my old bedroom with too many things that don’t fit and yet have nowhere to go, I hesitate. Why leave? But I know there is nothing I can do to stay here, in this moment, with her.
I have chosen: my home country that I left when I was 30. I will return there with two children whom I want to experience that home too. I’ve chosen grandparents and brothers and cousins that I’ve never quite learned to live without. I’ve chosen green fields and cozy pubs and heavy coats and clearer seasons and self-deprecating humor and supermarket shelves speak my language.
On paper, the decision makes sense. The conversations justifying our move make all the sense. The plotting—yearly plans with schools and budgets and careers and timing—makes sense too. Leaving Amanda makes no sense. And it matters nothing because I can’t get off the plane and unbuckle my children and walk down the airplane aisle with my husband to run to her and say, I love you. You are my home and I will stay with you forever. Let’s build something that will hold us and a future we can name.
When I imagine that plane ride home—now with wipes for the seats, premade snacks, stickers and coloring pads in Ziploc bags—I imagine listening as the flight attendant instructs us about what to do in an emergency. “First put on your own mask,” he’ll say. “Take care of yourself first.” But like everyone else on this plane, I know that if it came down to it, we’d put on our family’s oxygen first and save ourselves last.
