B and I just got back from a whirlwind weekend trip to Chicago, Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Windsor, Ontario, where I did a book club, a book fair, a book reading/signing, and a surprise reunion with my college roommates, some of whom came in from as far away as California and Maryland for the event. The four of us had not been in the same room together for nine years, since the most recent wedding. Even though we've made efforts to do so, someone always had something they couldn't get out of, or not enough money, or kids to take care of (though not, alas, the latter excuse for me, since I am still denied entrance to the Mommy Club and at this point have no hopes of ever being admitted).
The whole thing was quite a surprise, orchestrated by my dear friend Becky, whose enthusiasm for this book-publishing thing has by now far eclipsed my own, which has been tempered with some small amounts of anxiety and cynicism. I knew nothing about it. B and I drove through the night to reach Ann Arbor by 3 a.m. In the morning, after too-little sleep, a strange email about last-minute changes to the panel I was going to be on that day made me cranky, and I didn't know which building I was supposed to be in, and it was raining and cold, blah blah blah. But I found the right place, and when I walked in the door my cousins had come in from Windsor for the panel and were waiting for me there, and I had a few minutes to collect myself. Lo and behold, here comes my friend Barbara, now a Washington correspondent for one of the North Carolina papers, and our old pal Chris, who works as a lawyer in Cleveland, down the hallway with smiles on their faces to surprise me. I was surprised, all right. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.
The panel was fine. I appeared with Jacquelyn Mitchard and Elizabeth Rosner, who was lovely, on what it means to be a woman writer, a topic for another day and one that always makes me rant. But I read a little from the novel and spoke a bit afterward, trying not to sound like a babbling idiot because I always get so nervous in front of crowds. Afterward I signed books and we went to lunch. It was pretty soggy, and with so much company I didn't have much of a chance to check out the rest of the book fair, but it seemed well-attended and interesting. Ann Arbor lived up to its reputation as another great Midwestern college town, of which I am obviously a big fan.
We drove back to Farmington to Becky's place. B confessed in the car that he had known Barbara and Chris were coming and had helped orchestrate it, calling them earlier in the morning when I was in the shower. He's always been a lousy secret-keeper (sometime I will write about the way he proposed to me, which, while adorable, I saw coming from about three thousand miles away) and now that I know I cannot trust him I will have to start monitoring his cell-phone calls and locking up the cats while I'm gone.
At Becky's house, the last surprise of the weekend--my dear Halley--was waiting for me, all the way from Santa Rosa, Cali. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
The rest of the weekend was a bit of a whirlwind while we caught up, played with each other's kids, and, ahem, drank a bit. They thought it was a great excuse for a reunion. I thought it was just the salve to the soul I needed at the moment, because sometimes you just need your girls around you. Sometimes a little armor between you and the world makes it a little less raw, especially when you've spent the last four years focused on a single project that may or may not succeed, that may or may not be read, that may or may not get a fair shake in the press. After you've had your house ripped up by Mother Nature and your ass stuck with a thousand needles in vain attempts at getting pregnant and your life turned upside-down in a dozen little horrible ways, you just need your girls.
I have mine. No matter how far away, how busy our lives get, I still have them, and thank God for that.