The Joy of Lifelong Friendships and The Ancient Word to Describe Them

My friend lamented to her pharmacist about the absolute cheek of her insurance company. Her insurance no longer covered her hormone replacement therapy.

Begrudgingly, she handed over two hundred dollars for estrogen. Estrogen keeps her normal. It also keeps her from sweating like a cold toilet on a hot day. Estrogen resuscitates her lifeless libido. For instance, without estrogen, the chances she’d feel like having sex are, like, zero. With estrogen, her chances swell to a whopping six or seven percent. Two hundred dollars is a small price to pay for those odds.

The two of us now are, at our age, lifelong friends.

Over the years, our brains have gradually become something akin to wet mattresses. They are sodden with decades worth of song lyrics and commercial jingles and not much space for details that matter. Also, we have menopausal fog. Details float and bob in our heads like bands of thousands of little yellow rogue rubber duckies in rough ocean swells. Additionally, things that once seemed important, like the name of that guy in college who had the third nipple, or why we were so offended by things or, you know, sometimes even the names of our children, can be hard to locate. 

Most conversations we share today are two-woman circuses; we jump through hoops trying to retrieve words. Word retrieval is hard. So is remembering the point of just about anything we are saying. We are easily distracted now. Conversations are hard to keep on point when we frequently pause to shout disparaging remarks at the driver in front of us. Or we have to stop and order green tea in a cafe. Or we have simply forgotten the point.

We’ve been friends long enough that we can announce, ‘I’m going to shit myself if you don’t pull this car over at the next gas station,’ without a hint of embarrassment.

We share dressing rooms without self-consciousness. She doesn’t judge my ill-fitting, stretched-out bra. She doesn’t notice the squishy remnants of the four children I’ve birthed. She doesn’t care about my scars. Her face doesn’t twist in horror at the sight of the gnarly scar under my right arm where an unskilled doctor once yanked a tumor out of me like he was wrestling a sea cucumber from the ocean floor. My friend has my best interest in mind which is why I trust her in the dressing room. She says things like: ‘terrible color,’ ‘oh, God no,’ or, ‘that would be cute if you weren’t old.’ I don’t take it personally. When something is flattering, she simply says, ‘buy it.’ And I do. 

Confident women stand where insecure teenagers used to be.

We know ourselves now. My friend recently told me that in her twenties, she’d work 60 hours a week. Wanting nothing more than to collapse and eat Vietnamese takeaway with her husband, she felt obligated to join friends every Friday night. Every Friday, she and her husband ate with their friendship group which consisted of four other couples. They’d meet at a predetermined restaurant and then go en masse to blockbuster to choose a movie. Later they’d go back to one couple’s house to watch the movie. Together. This group of ten. Every week. 

My friend worried she’d have no friends if she said ‘no,’ so she carried on being miserable every Friday night. Today if she was told she’d have to spend every Friday getting ten people to agree on a restaurant and movie, she’d laugh so hard that tears would roll down her leg.

We have a group text with other lifelong friends.

First of all, there’s no pressure to post, no pressure to respond, and no judgment, just memes, and laugh-out-loud comments. No one is keeping score. Occasionally, we exchange words of encouragement. We empathize if someone’s pet dies. We reassure the first-time bride that she will be a gorgeous bride, menopausal midsection and all. We celebrate milestones.

Most certainly, society is wrong. Beauty is not only for the young. My middle-aged friends, are infinitely more beautiful today than in their youth. Age, experience, and wisdom suit them. Dimension, depth, and newly exposed facets of their personalities and souls make them undeniably attractive. 

As a coach, I talk with girls from junior high and high school, through middle age and beyond. Maintaining friendships is not always easy. Lack of friendships or strained friendships can feel all-consuming. Social media pressures us to have ‘perfect’ friendships. We can fall into the comparison trap. Because of this strain, maintaining friendships can seem futile, vulnerable, and downright exhausting. But over time, once you find your people, you will likely thank yourself and your friends for putting in the effort.

Ancient Sicilians had a word to describe a lifelong, female friendship that has grown and deepened with time: ‘cummari.’

‘Cummari’ was used as an alternative to ‘godmother’ and it also describes a bride’s maid of honor. It comes up in word and song to describe the bond of solidarity between women. This ancient word has evolved. Cummari describes the relationship between two women who are exceptionally close. It describes women who might have chosen each other to be godmothers to their children. It means a woman who feels like family, a sister. A BFF for the long haul.

If the word ‘cummari’ isn’t enough to fill your heart and water your eyes, wait. There’s more. Ancient Italians gifted female friends a basil plant when that friend crossed the threshold to become her cummari. Someone, please hand me a tissue. I can’t with the cuteness.

You and your friends might not always be in the same stage or place. You might go days, weeks, or months without speaking on the phone. You may go years without seeing each other’s shining faces in the flesh. Values might shift. Incomes may not be equal. But there is something breathtakingly beautiful about standing in solidarity, honoring a woman you’ve chosen to be a sister. Your cummari.