My Women Friends

Laundry Eagles ©1992
My friendships were forged bouncing babies on hips,
folding towels to each other's tune, accommodating without question.
Speaking over-the-fence music of mothers,
we searched for our songs among static-free
billows of sheets and unmated socks.

Like socks, our mates vanished without warning,
leaving us bound in fang-lined cocoons, too small for eagles.

My friendships were fed by outstretched hands,
binding wounds as we emerged bleeding, free falling, plummeting.
We landed on eagle backs,to soar straight up
on the wings of whichever had healed.
Our touch downs were never fatal.

My friendships flourish in our flights apart
and our headlong rushes home. Crazy quilt eagles dancing round the sky;
free in our love and our strength,
alone together, together alone,
free-flying, floating toward light.

***

I am a lucky woman; whenever I have needed holding, there were women around to oblige. Before my husband came and long after he left, there were the friends who knew beyond words, just where the bleeding was. As I look at the three years since my sister died, I am thrown by the number of women who simply left my life. I am shocked by the number of losses in a short amount of time. Yet though the drama of my life was more than they wanted to witness, others remained. Others appeared. The continuity of that poem remains as true today as it was in 1992, the year my husband left.

Judy, Andrea, Nancy, Paige, and Gail -- they are fixed planets in my system. Martha, Laura, Linda, and both Sues. Newer perhaps, but no less important. My grandmother used to say it was hard to leave this world because there were too many colors to say good bye to. She said each person was a distinct color and I was her lilac girl. I was touched when she said this, but I did not truly understand what she meant. Twenty-five years later, I know.

My friends are the colors of my flower garden. They are just as unruly, defying the planting instructions which so clearly define height and width. They grow according to no one's rule but their own.

And they fly.

I have awakened, terrified because my family has all died, but for my son. This was silly, I realized the other day. My family has not died. They are all around me. My laundry eagle friends are scattered, but we fly home to one another, in joy as much as sorrow. We offer more colors than any rainbow. More strength than any man I ever knew.

I am a lucky woman.
And I sleep deeply.
And I fly.