Every few weeks a text message will pop up on my iPhone screen when I am in the middle of a business meeting. It usually reads something like, “dinner with the girls at Cochin in Surry Hills at 7.30pm next Thursday”.
Those messages brighten my day. Like a holiday booked months in advance, knowing I have a night out with my girlfriends looming gives me something to look forward to.
The older I get, the more I enjoy time with my girlfriends. Retaining close friendships from the important phases of our lives is something that women seem to be pretty good at. I was reminded of this when attending the 80th birthday of a family member. My husband’s aunt sat in one corner at her party holding hands with the three women who had seen her through most of her life. The foursome were school friends and had survived their partners. For most of the party it was as though no one else mattered to them. They giggled seemingly non-stop for hours.
When I am with my girlfriends it’s probably a slightly younger version of that. I put on my ‘friend’ hat and the rest of my many hats take a backseat for a few hours. I can forget about my work and some of the other realities of life, if only for a few hours.
I have four distinct groups of friends that represent the areas of my life that are important to me.
- School friends. I graduated high school in 1983. Thirty years later I consider that tight-knit group of people who saved my sanity during the tumultuous teenage years as my best friends. They know where all the skeletons are hidden because they helped put them there. We only need to give each other a knowing glance to understand the meaning of a situation. So yes we probably laugh non-stop for hours on end on the rare occasions that we are together. Most are scattered across the country as our lives took us in different directions post-school but we connect at the very least weekly via Facebook. Every now and then a band from our youth will tour and we will arrange to see them together, without fear of judgement. I have June 2 diarised to see The Sunnyboys as part of Vivid Festival at the Opera House with my school friend Stacey. When we are together we mainly talk about the good old days.
- University friends. My two stints at different universities resulted in a couple of groups of enduring friendships. A few times a year we catch up for dinners and lunches. The discussions are easy and fluid. We still have so much in common even though the frequency with which we meet is less than most of us would like. If I am traveling for business and there is a uni friend in that city we will always try to connect. Our conversations centre on our careers and the careers of our cohort.
- Women I have met through my sons. They are the mothers of my sons’ school friends and the friends that I see the most regularly. As we met through the school we live in the same area of Sydney. Now that our children are teenagers we have the time to devote to each other, for at least one evening every few weeks. Lorraine is the glue that binds us and she is chief architect of our nights out. She knows the best restaurants and makes sure we get to try them all. We go to generational concerts together too. I saw Coldplay and Earth, Wind and Fire with these women. It was such fun. We discuss our children and our marriages when we are together. And we laugh. A lot.
- Career friends. I have worked with some amazing people during my career. Along the way some of those women have become close friends. There have been one or two in virtually every job that I have held. And although I no longer work with most of them we catch up for coffee or dinner when we can. Some are still in the media, others have moved overseas or interstate and are running businesses. When we lost our friend Rod Allen recently my former deputy editor of ELLE Margie Sheedy rang me from her Cowra home to discuss our time with him. Although we hadn’t seen each other for six months she said she thought of me immediately. We feel forever connected by our history. My media colleagues-turned-lifetime-friends and I mainly chat about new ideas that could save our industry when we are together.
I am so grateful for my friends. Are your female friendships becoming of greater importance in your life as you get older?