If We Saw Ourselves As Others See Us

"Oh would some power the gift give us, To see ourselves as others see us."- Robert Burns.

In my simplistic little outlook, how much time and energy we could save if we saw ourselves as others see us.  If we could be kinder to ourselves, prouder of ourselves; give ourselves more credit.

This past weekend, I traveled back to the east coast, where I am from, and visited two childhood friends, sisters.  We met each other about 43 years ago when we were young teens.  Gosh that seems so long ago!  We last saw each other on my wedding day - 28 years ago.

How time flies!  And how did so much time pass and let us get away from one another??  As children we were thick as thieves.  They were neighborhood friends living two doors up from me.  We spent every day we could together when we were young.  Even when they moved away to another state, we stayed in touch.  My mom drove me up there in the summers for long weekends; their mom drove me back.  I had been in both their weddings.  Saw both of them become mothers for the first time.

And then...well, I guess we all got busy with our lives.

I remember I loved being at their house.  You see their family had eight children.  Heaven for me the only child!  I was just one of the many up there and I enjoyed their younger brothers as much as I enjoyed being with the girls.  It was chaos while my house was a tomb.  Someone was always yelling and running and getting in trouble.  Meal times were well orchestrated events.  Be slow and you could go hungry.

For this blog I will refer to the sisters as S and L, S being a year older than me and L being two years younger.  We reconnected via Facebook a couple of months ago.  The trip has been long planned and awaited.

This past weekend was game on!

I really, honestly had NO reservations about going to see them.  They did.  L told me they wondered if we would have awkwardness, disconnected quietness between us.  I did not anticipate that at all.  And I was not disappointed.

L told me right before I arrived she and S were excitedly talking about the reunion that was imminent..

"Oh I love [my name].  She was always so much fun and we could always just be ourselves around her" L said S had gushed.

And when L's doorbell rang with me on the doorstep, L said they just squealed and hugged each other like little girls.  I actually heard them both exclaim inside "[my name]!"

The door was opened and all 28 years washed away.

As I like to say when referring to myself - the product is the same but the packaging has changed over the years.  And we were still very much the three girls underneath the women we had become.

So, of course, we got to the present first.  S was divorced as I was.  Her marriage lasted 29 years and she has been married to her second husband six years now.  I was interested in how they met and she said online and that they had met six months after her divorce was final.  S always was the sister to have a boyfriend.  

L has been married to her husband for 30 years come November.  Wow!  And I can tell they are very committed to each other and J is very much a hands on husband.

Words, stories and feelings tumbled forward.  We all at once seemed to alternate benign pleasantries, hysterical memories and injections with those things in life that just make you go 'eh'.  Yes we found that life was just that - life - for the three of us.  I had the feeling of us three long ago, sprawled across beds in their room, discussing boys and philosophies and what we were going to do with our lives.  And here we were, fast forward 40 years, and ours lives had ended up pretty much the way we had envisioned but then again, looking at another angle, really not at all.

Seems that the things we want others to know most have a way at making themselves known.  By that I mean, those things that are somewhat dark but those things that make us who we are.  Quite plainly, life for the three of us certainly wasn't the reality of what it seemed back then.

I was quite surprised to learn, very nearly as soon as I got there, that life was not a picnic in their house growing up.  Apparently their mother and father fought, loudly and intensely, and on top of that their mother played favorites among her eight and L was NOT a favorite...by a long shot.  I will not divulge here the details of their personal struggles but during the course of the weekend so many bad memories were relived by L when revealed to me that my desire to see their parents after 30 years completely disappeared.  Knowing what I know now...these are not people I want to see.

I can tell you that it made me feel good for both 'girls' to tell me that they loved me coming over and spending the night because it meant a night of peace in their household.  I was also told that I was the only outsider, only friend of all the children, that was allowed inside their house - ever.  This surprised me but looking back I don't remember any other children outside their family playing with us.

We laughed over how we loved going over to each other's houses, them mine and mine theirs.  L remembered my pink bedroom verbatim - crazy! And they said they were amazed that at Christmas all the presents under the tree were for me!  I can tell you that L revealed that they NEVER had a good Christmas because their mother would throw all the toys down the stairs, close herself up in a room and maybe, just maybe,emerge nary in time to throw something on the table and call it Christmas dinner.

That was unbelievably sad to me...I would have never guessed.

Over the course of the weekend, two of S and L's brothers joined us at a wine festival.  A great time was had by all and while we were killing about 4 bottles of wine, I noticed T, one of the brothers, sitting across from me and really studying me.

"D, you're just the same.  You look the same and you are laughing and smiling just like you did when we were kids.  I always remember you laughing and smiling...and roller skating up the sidewalk R-E-A-L...S-L-O-W"

HaHa!  That was back in the day of clamp on metal skates with the straps and size adjustment key.  I always hated roller skating!

But oh, laughing and smiling?!  Really?!  The girls agreed.  I always seemed happy.  And that made me feel GREAT.

Kids are resilient I guess...even me.  And though I may think I was always unsure, melancholy and timid, it just goes to show you what the gift of friends can give you. As they say "Friendship doubles the joy and divides the grief."

Amen to that...amen to that.