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The mirror of old friends
Emily and I have been driving for 10 hours. Once we cross the bridge to Prince Edward Island, clouds of white butterflies float over the fields and the goldenrod sparks like a thousand yellow suns against the creamy yarrow by the road.
“Nice ditch bouquets,” I say.
Emily laughs, because that’s what I called the roadside wildflowers when we first came to this island 29 years ago.
We were young then. Work colleagues first, then friends. Both of us newly divorced and mourning the end of our first marriages. We each had two young children.
It was my idea to come to the island that first time. Neither of us had a car big enough for two moms and four kids, so we booked a “Rent-a-Junk” van. We packed the kids inside and rattled east through Maine and New Brunswick, tossing juice boxes and crackers into the back to keep the kids quiet.
Some of my mom friendships didn’t outlast the parenting years, but ours has deepened through seismic life shifts
No phones, no GPS. Emily spread a map open across her knees while I drove. There was no Confederation Bridge to cross yet, so we had to take the ferry. It was midnight by the time it dropped us off on the island. Then we had another hour of driving to go, some of it on rutted dirt roads, before we found the cottage. We tucked in the kids before dropping into bed, still in our clothes.
That first morning in PEI, we woke to lupines in cartoon colors hemming a sparkling bay outside the windows. Great blue herons stood sentry. Fiddle music floated across the water from a church with a steeple striped red and white like a barber pole. Emily and I fell in love with the island and have returned to PEI many times since. With the kids at first, during summer vacations, and then by ourselves, often in autumn.
Some of my mom friendships didn’t outlast the parenting years, but ours has deepened through seismic life shifts: Emily’s thyroid cancer, the death of her son from a heart defect at age 19. Her realization that she was attracted to women. Her soaring success as a prize-winning poet.
On my side, there was my stuttering career as a freelance writer and novelist. My marriage to a man with two children. Breast cancer. And then my decision, at 42, to add a fifth child to my blended family.
Now I’m about to celebrate 28 years of marriage to my second husband. Emily also married again, 20 years ago, this time to a woman. Yet, each time we cross the Northumberland Strait to the island, it’s as if we leave behind the vast, complex strands of our individual histories to inhabit our own time and place.
I bought an old farmhouse on the island 15 years ago. Emily and I share memories as we arrive; we always find something new to remember. We watch gannets and terns dive for fish offshore, and marvel at the bald eagles circling overhead while we wait for the tuna boats to come in at North Lake Harbor.
Where once we supervised our children as they swam and searched for beach glass, Emily and I do that ourselves now, throwing ourselves into the sea or comparing treasures with the same sort of joyful abandon. Meanwhile, we mull over our careers and marriages, politics, aging parents, the meaning of art, our own mortality and the futures our children face.
A lot can happen in 30 years. A long friendship serves as a magic mirror along the way, allowing you to both see yourself as you are, and as you appear to others. At times, this mirror even grants you a silvery glimpse of who you might become.
Your friend can remind you of early dreams and disasters, mistakes and successes. She’s there to encourage you to scream in fury or rue your failures, laugh at your follies and howl at the moon. Your friendship is a safe sounding board when you’re in despair and a springboard for hope.
Most of all, it is a gift.
