Sisters from Another Mother

The first thing you need to know about the picture at left, of me and my dear friend Simone, is that it was taken with my US BlackBerry during my last night back in America recently. And though I initially cursed the grainy, poor quality of the resulting image, a few weeks later, I am so glad I thought to have it taken.

You see, there were so very many wonderful friends I had hoped to connect with during my recent trip home. I did manage to see fabulous gals like Deb, and Sarah, and Sharahn, and Wilma, and Dana, and Mary Ann, (and, briefly, Brenda, and my girl Allison, who I publicly acknowledge owing a sumptuous meal the next time I return home!!!). And of course I spent that weekend of culinary debauchery in Raleigh, North Carolina with two former Detroit Free Press interns who have morphed into two of the most terrific women I know, Joyce and Jamila.

But for every dear friend I was able to spend time with, there were 5 I didn't get to see. Would that I could have carved out 3 days in Chicago to see my "Road Dawg For Life" Veronica and her beautiful little daughter August (I left the country just days before Veronica won the prestigious Knight Fellowship at Stanford University...ARGHHHHH!!) Oh, and I don't even know if my friend Lisa in Portland, OR even still considers me a friend, given the fact that I have yet to lay eyes on her baby girl named...you guessed it...RACHEL!!

But here's the worst of it, y'all. I even managed to almost wreck a 30 year friendship by NOT getting my ass down to Charlotte, North Carolina to spend time with my best friend, Faith. It was such a tight turnaround, and I'd been hoping she could make the 3 hour drive to Raleigh while I was there, but her schedule was too jammed.

And then just as I was leaving the country, I realized that the reason Faith wasn't returning my calls is that she was using an old, pre-US BlackBerry number, which I haven't used since before Nairobi. By the time Faith sent me a salty email threatening to slap the shit out of me for not making time to connect, all I could do was apologize profusely. She was right...I had screwed up royally, and I felt lower than a snake's belly about it.

But at least there was my bon voyage dinner with Simone to look forward to, on that last night Stateside. She's the N'awlins belle I've written about before, the one who totally reminds me of Bette Davis's eponymous vixen in the movie "Jezebel," except Simone is not a selfish, manipulative Bitch From Hell. She just resembles the character, with her long strawberry blonde hair and waspish waist.

Anyhoo, Simone and I met about 11 years ago, when she moved to DC from New York to help usher in a Golden Era of DC Fine Dining, as the PR Director for some of the best restaurants to ever hit the region. (At least three of the pounds around my waist that refuse to budge are the result of all the restaurant openings, tastings, and other culinary invites Simone has steered my way. Oh, and let's not even MENTION the fact that's she's married to one of the hottest pastry chefs in America, for whom I would crawl over broken glass if he even just promised to make me one of his Lemon Doberge Cakes!!)

As I wrote before, I expected to hate this beautiful, skinny, high fashionista "Noo YAWK" PR whiz when we met, given my lowly status as a hustling freelancer. But by the time my 3 hour lunch with Simone ended, I had received a profound message, one that eventually wound up helping save my sanity. At one point during that marathon meal, we started comparing notes about various personal challenges, and I mentioned how much my sister/adjunct mother Julie was struggling with lupus and a host of other health challenges back in Illinois, and how agonizing it was to be so far away from her.

By the time Simone finished relating how she had lost her mother and sister within a year of each other, under incredibly difficult circumstances, I was too stunned to speak. How did this dynamic, poised woman sitting across from me manage to survive TWO tremendous blows with such indomitable grace? It just seemed impossible, and yet there she was.

11 years later, I've lost a beloved sister, and a mother...and a brother and father thrown in there for good measure. Now, I don't know if I have ever been as graceful and poised about those losses as Simone seemed on the day we met, but I survived. And yes, I daresay I'm even thriving, in most ways. Hell, six days out of seven, I even feel richly blessed.

(This from the same woman who'd had every intention of climbing into the aforementioned beloved sister's grave and pulling the dirt in on top of her.)

So it made sense that when I met up with Simone on the night before leaving the States, she was wearing an orange sweater and I was wearing an orange sweater. It made sense that Simone ordered the most perfect tempranillo I'd ever tasted, and forced me to have a second glass of it-- after she'd already forced me to have a mojito to start with! It made sense that we sat there for almost 3 hours getting caught up on her life and mine (including her insistence that I find myself a man to "knock the dust off that thang." Sorry, girlfriend, but you've known I'm a writer since the day you met me, and that everything you say around a writer eventually winds up in print!).

It even made sense when I started telling Simone about my reasons for launching Project Archangel Julie, and how I had visited the Maai Mahiu Internally Displaced Persons Camp on Friday, March 13, and she paused for a minute and then said that her beloved sister had died on March 13.

Yet one more piece of compelling evidence that if you're truly blessed, throughout your lifetime you will meet many women who with very little effort will become your "sisters from another mother." And you will cherish those friendships so much that you'll be able to look at a fuzzy, poorly lit and badly focused picture of you with one of those women and instead of obsessing over the flaws, it will make you feel happy every single time.