This piece is an intro to a larger work by Jenn Ouellette.  You can read more of her work at her blog, Jenn at Juggling Life and Jenn’s a contributor and editor over at The Women’s Colony.  You know the drill, read it and leave her feedback!

Midlife (a stage in which I’m solidly entrenched) is the time when we start to reflect upon our lives. We are no longer worrying about becoming who we are meant to be; we are that person—for good, for bad, for real. Which is not to say that we can’t or won’t change in some ways; but we probably are not going to become an astronaut after all.

So we reflect, look back and measure.

How does a 46-year old woman, long-married, mother of four take the measure of her life? There are so many possibilities—education, career, husband, kids, volunteer work, hobbies, future dreams.

For an extroverted person whose milieu has always been interpersonal skills my focus lately has been on friends.

Up until about age 8 the memories are either a blur or known to me as a story told by my mother.

I know that when I was born my mother had a friend who had a baby about a month older than I was. We were playpen pals for about a year. I don’t believe there exists a photo of the two of us. I do know that my mother retained a lifelong bitterness that she couldn’t use her favorite girl’s name, Jill, for me because her friend’s baby was named Jill. Then the friend had the audacity to move away—making the accommodation all for naught.

The first friend I actually have snatches of memory about was from kindergarten and first grade. I don’t remember her name and I can’t ask my mother because she is dead. I do remember that small friend and I were the best of friends and the worst of enemies. I remember clinging hugs, hair-pulling and racing down the sidewalk on training wheels– knobby skinned knees pumping furiously and stringy, dishwater blonde hair flying behind us.

Between kindergarten and third grade we moved three times and I attended four schools. I’m sure I had friends, but not for long.

It is Leslie Heymann, my pal in third through sixth grades, whom I truly remember as my first best friend.  I think it was through my friendship with her that I realized that, like my mother, I need one really great friend at all times. Leslie’s family had plenty of money, but her parents were divorced and she was Jewish. My mother had no money, “lived in sin” with her boyfriend, and though I wasn’t Jewish it was still vividly clear that neither of us quite fit the mold of the wealthy Santa Monica neighborhood where we attended elementary school.

But we had each other, and that was more than enough.

In the 1970s two ten-year olds with bicycles and working mothers had a level of freedom my children could not dream of.  “Free-range” does not begin to describe our ability to roam.