Friends=Happiness

We are four women in our mid-thirties. We live in Chicago, Minneapolis, and a small farming town in Iowa. We have four husbands and seven children under the age of seven. We are an oncology nurse, an environmental attorney, a kindergarten teacher, and a speech therapist. Most of us work full-time and all of us are dedicated to our children full-time. 2007 turns out to be the year in which we have known each other exactly half our lives. College was a long time ago, come to find out.

We have in common husbands who - with nary a word of complaint - took care of the kids for a long weekend so that we could be together. My husband went so far as to take the boys to his parents' house so that my friends and I could stay together in one house.

It would be impossible to describe the perfection of this much-needed weekend with friends. I could give you a string of words such as: coffee, chocolate, Hugh Grant movie, shoe shopping, delicious meals out, and more coffee. Okay: and more chocolate. But that would only scratch the surface. There is no way to measure the joy of being on one's own timetable, rather than a child's, for a few consecutive days. Nor to capture the feeling of waking up in your own bed three days in a row only because you are no longer tired, smelling the coffee that has already been made downstairs by an early rising friend.

But what truly cannot be quantified is the emotional satisfaction of being with friends you can talk to about whatever is in your heart: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Old friends, particularly roommates, seem to be the best when it comes to making me laugh until my face hurts and simultaneously creating a safe place to cry. People talk about women being in the prime of our lives in our 30's and I don't doubt this - we are fabulous, after all! - but what struck me over the weekend was what an incredibly challenging and life-altering decade this is for us. How lucky I am that I made such amazing friends back when I was too young to understand how much I'd need them later on. I was exhausted this afternoon when everyone had gone home, but not because I didn't get enough sleep; it was a complete emotional exhaustion. This is a good thing, believe me. I find that being with old friends not only helps me reconnect with them, but also with myself.

I feel ready now to get on with work and the kids and moving to the new house with renewed energy and a strong sense of inner peace. And I am already counting the days until we do this again.