pulling strings

It’s been a glorious past few days here in San Francisco. The trees are in full blossom, everything is greening, and the city is giddy with spring. I’ve had an incredible birthday week, culminating in this weekend, which then ended in today….which just happens to be the birthday of one of my dearest friends…Reya Mellicker, blog queen of Washington, D.C. The fates decided that the majority of women I’ve loved in my life would make an appearance center stage this week, and today I woke up mindful and heartfull that this was the anniversary of my dear friend's entrance into being.

Last Sunday’s table full of women friends appears to have worked as some sort of great invocation, calling in all women friends, bringing them strongly into focus. Strings were pulled taut and women I’ve been corded to showed up out of the blue, out of the past and out of our last conversation.

My friendship with Naomi was one of the gifts from my birthday last year. This year I spent the evening with her and a slew of other beautiful women at Mecca, new and old friends among them, eating oysters and basking in the changes of the past year. Friday night I had dinner with one of my oldest friends, my friend Katie, a long feast of both delicious food and conversation, both of us delighting in the length and breadth of our friendship.

Saturday morning I found myself at a brunch reunited with two women I haven’t seen in over 15 years. They were best friends who started a feminist mental health clinic where I interned, both incredible role models to me, strong women with not only good politics, but oh! such good hearts. My friend Angie, had a crush on one of them, and I on the other. What a crush it was! I can remember my breath catch the first time I saw her, tall, dark and beautifully handsome, describing the program. Sometimes when I saw her for supervision I would blank out for minutes at a time, lost in crushdom. I was not alone. She had most of the straight women in the program questioning their sexuality. Barbara, Angie and I spent hours as young interns discussing our “transference” feelings towards one or the other of them, and here, some 20 years later, Barbara picked this moment to invite us all to brunch. At sixty-two, my crush is still knock out gorgeous, can still hold the room spellbound by the combo of the sensuous lilt of her voiced (spiced by the Bronx), and her elegant hands accenting her words. My breath still catches looking at her, but this time round, we’re both grown up, and having the feeling devoid of the unsteadiness of youth is something to relish.

Last night, in my kitchen, I put my arms around the two women I was both friends and lovers with in my early twenties and had a little moment (you know, where the heart chakra opens and you get all weepy…). Janet I see a lot these days, but my other friend lives four hours away, and between our lives and children, we don’t see each other often. Life conspired to bring her up here this weekend, and then more strings were pulled and we all ended up in the same place at the same time.

Today I woke up and thought about the fact that Reya had been born on this day, five decades and some years back in time. I thought about all the ways our friendship has enhanced my life, and flavored the way I see the world. Happy Birthday, Reya! What a blessing it is to me that you were born. What a blessing to have such incredible woman friends. I'm having a moment....a moment that's been lasting for days.