Fierce Love

“I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce” – Margaret Mead

Is it because for the most part the female sex is programmed to be the caretakers and caregivers that a woman’s love for some of her woman friends can burn so hot? Putting the idea of the Bromance aside, do men feel the same way about other men?

Will a man snap sleep from his eyes at 3am because the phone rang, and the Caller ID lets him know that he is needed? Not for bail money or to get someone out of a ditch, but simply to provide support?

I have several girlfriends whom I love very much. In particular over the past decade three of them have come to be more important to me than sleep.

Given that I don’t get to sleep worth a damn, the fact that any of these three could call and wake me up, and I would immediately answer the phone without sounding groggy, this is kind of a big deal.

They are the Wyrd Sisters who Godmother my children even though only two of them know each other in “real life.” Every child should have three Godmothers, and I made sure mine do. They are as similar to each other in many ways as they are different, and I have learned an astounding amount about almost everything simply by having them in my life.

I have never met one of them in person, and that doesn’t matter one damn bit.

I mentioned the other day that this year hasn’t started out all that well, and I need to admit it just keeps getting worse. My email dinged at me yesterday, and when I moved my mouse to abort the screen saver I saw that a comment had been made on my post about thinking positively. I opened it, and I read this:

Diana said,
January 14, 2010 at 1:58 pm · Edit

The snow has finally stopped and we have had two gloriously sunny days, a liitle cold but who cares. Ian is being recruited for the school soccor team and is really excited. Homer likes to eat mouthfuls of snow everytime he goes out, because he can. My best friend just reminded me I need to gather all my small wonders and share these with those I care most about

I immediately burst into tears. When I calmed down I picked up the phone to call her, and when she answered I utterly came apart again. I lost my shit for the simple reason that when I heard her voice I knew it would be all better, or even just seem all better, even though there isn’t one freaking thing she can do to help me with everything that’s going on.

She’s a single mom, and after her twins were born I took a nine day vacation to drive out of state to help her with her new boys. One night she was lying on the sofa, and I was in her recliner watching TV. The boys were in their bassinets. One of them woke up and started fussing, and as I stood up I said, “Do you want to take him or do you need me to do something?” There was no answer, and when I looked over I realized she was out cold.

I shuttled him into her guest room and spent hours with him while he did his infant thing. I got him to sleep, and the other baby started up. Into the guest room.

I’m not sure how many hours she got total, but when she woke up the relief on her face made every second that I had no idea what to do next worth it. She’s one of the strongest women I know, but I have seen her personal shit hit the fan many times. Since I would absolutely give her a kidney, or even take a baseball bat to a couple of said shit slingers, giving her that sleep was the least I could do.

Before I had kids I would have taken a bullet for her. Now that someone needs me she’ll have to make do with me yelling, “GUN!” so she can disarm the bastard.

Trust me. She could.

There’s not much I can say about Coyote that I haven’t said before, or at least linked to before, because if you’ve read any of her blog you can probably guess why I adore her. I have spent many an hour over the years wondering if it was a good thing to have hired her to work at The Bookstore with More Square Footage Than -

Ok fine. It was Borders. I worked at Borders before they went completely off their nut and decided it was better to sell lip balm than books. Or pay their bills. Or provide enough hours to each store so that the management wouldn’t have to work 400 hours a week because they’re salaried. Or or or…

*cough*

That job did good work at beating us down psychically, and on the one hand, without each other there we would have gone berserk. On the other hand, if I hadn’t hired her in the first place she could have avoided a WHOLE lot of crap that piled up in her life.

If the universe has a plan, I don’t know what it is. I am grateful, though, that the universe sent her into the job fair that day. One of the toughest days of my life was her birthday that she spent curled into a ball because her gall bladder was trying to escape from her abdomen, and I stood there watching her pain. There was NOTHING I could do about it. If I could have I would have placed my hands on her and absorbed that pain into myself, if even only for a few hours, simply to give her a break.

Coyote tells me when I’m being an asshole or simply being ridiculous. I expect this from her, even though I’m almost 39 and should be able to do a good job of recognizing these moments myself. Coyote knows never to remove food from in front of me or assume I have finished eating. She hates talking on the phone, but she will gladly spend over an hour on the damn thing with me if I need to hear her voice. While I was pregnant she kept her cell turned on all night, every night, and when Livvie was born she was the one who locked herself out of my house and had to go through the window in order to care for my dogs.

Coyote understands buying a pickup truck while depressed, and she never gave me shit for making that purchase.

Coyote has heard my sobbing more than anyone else in the past ten years. It is her house that I flee to whenever shit gets so bad that I need even a few hours to breathe deeply and relax. I have laughed to the point of almost vomiting with her, and we laugh even harder when we realize no one else would think it’s funny.

I don’t touch her as much as I should, and I don’t tell her I love her as often as I should.

She’s family now. They say that a best friend is a sister that God forgot to assign to your family, and when I look at some of the family that God did bother to assign, I think I’ve done a good job of replacing them.

I want my daughter to have her own Coyote when she grows up.

Jennyquarx almost died on me shortly into our friendship, and there are days when I’m laughing with her on the phone, and it suddenly hits me that thanks to some amazingly colossal medical negligence I might not have this in my life.

Thank goodness for antibiotics, and thank goodness that the Goddess was looking out for her.

I would have lost my ever loving mind over the past four years if I hadn’t had her around. I have called her at 2 o’ clock in the morning in hysterics because Livvie wouldn’t sleep, and I was about to lock myself in a closet, rocking back and forth. Yeah, she’s an hour behind me, but she still answered the phone and talked me down. She’s the only person, probably, outside of our immediate family who knows how insane this house can be, because she’s spent so many hours listening to it over the phone. She worries about me, she worries about my mom, and she worries about my friends, even though none of us have ever met her.

If our financial situation ever gets better you can bet I’m renting an RV and driving us to Wisconsin. I think she’ll need to wear padding, because the first time I lay eyes on her she’s going to get bulldozed to the floor in the biggest, most bone crushing hug I can manage.

Jennyquarx is the kind of chick who would ABSOLUTELY say to me, “You’re on crack. Your kids are butt ugly hideous,” if they were, and I totally appreciate that about her.

She understands my Crazy, and she understands my physical pain. I gave my son her husband’s middle name because I happen to love him too. He spent two hours on instant messenger at 3am one time when Livvie wouldn’t sleep, making me laugh instead of cry, and I will NEVER forget that. She has the best laugh I have ever heard, and on those occasions when I make her giggle or I overhear her husband making her giggle, I just stand there with a grin splitting my face.

I owe her more than I could ever give her.

A couple of months ago I opened my email and found one that said, “______ has requested to add you as a friend on Facebook.”

I burst into tears.

I am not going to provide her name, because I’m not certain of how large a presence she would like on this here innertube. She was my best friend before I moved down here from NJ, and we fell apart when I moved. It was devastating. I missed her beyond belief, and I would go through old shoe boxes filled with greeting cards and find some from her, and my heart would shatter.

It was because of her that I stopped biting my nails when I was 22, and I distinctly remember the time she colored her hair, and it got too light. I got a hysterical phone call, and we managed the situation by having her use shampoo with brown tint to it until enough time had passed to re-color it. She’s a frigging Amazon of the best type, and when we would go out nothing made me giggle more than watching guys walk past and nearly break their necks turning around to give her a second look.

She made me laugh all the time.

She sent me daffodils when I felt like nothing was going right.

Chocolate covered pretzels, too.

She’s an artist, and I would go into her basement and look at the canvas she was painting, and I would stand there in awe. I don’t have that kind of talent in anything. It was an amazing thing to see.

It’s been 15 years. I opened that email, jumped on Facebook, and let her know that hers was the first request that ever made me cry. I missed her SO much. In conversation I discovered that she’s going through a fairly insane amount of shit herself right now, and I realized as I read that nothing has changed. You fuck with her, you fuck with me. And if I can make you pay for it, I will.

It really is a fierce kind of love. It’s not the same as mother-love, or spouse-love, or the love we have for our parents. But it really does burn brightly. It helps us remain grounded, and it helps us imagine what if. You can sit for hours and make endless plans with friends such as these knowing that if none of them come to pass it won’t matter. Just having them in your life is enough.

I hope all of you have friends like this.

Yes, even the dudes.

Now I need to call one of them because I promised.

Happy Friday.