I had a cousin when I was little named Sarah. We lived 8 states away from each other, saw the other rarely if ever, and never spoke on the phone. We were a year and a day apart in age and worlds away from each other in gifts–she a tomboy, spoke her mind, unafraid to defend herself in a fight; me a Lipsmacker lover, cautious and worried, and always afraid to defend myself in a fight.
Yet somehow, every time I saw her–at the occasional wedding, Catholic holiday or old relative funeral, was like was coming back to the pool after too long in the sun—”aaaaahhhhhh.” She was one of my dearest friends and though I had 4 of them at home I saw Sarah as a sister. My sister. And any time we were together, I knew I was going to have a blast.
Then we grew up. Time took us traveling–she moved a few times, we both went to high school, then college and graduate schools and then off to big cities and new friends. Throw in our respective climbs up the career ladder–hers in marketing and mine in TV journalism, and a romantic relationship or two and we lost touch.
Sarah moved to New York and I moved to Virginia and in the days before cell phones, Twitter and Facebook you could easily lose touch with someone via a lost phone number and a canned voice saying “that number is no longer in service. If you need help, hang up and dial your operator.” I would have done so to get Sarah back in my world but like me, my operator had no idea where she had gone.
Besides, I was too distracted to find out. Concentrating on becoming the next Katie Couric I had little time to track down lost friends. So my Sister-cousin–my partner in holiday crime– slipped away from my world, along with at least 3 old boyfriends, 7 neighborhood pals and every single person who signed “friends forever” in my junior high yearbook.
Three decades later my film, the Breast Cancer Diaries, aired on Discovery Health and within a few days I got an email on my film’s webpage from a familiar cyberface: my cousin Sarah. She’d seen the film and felt compelled and excited to be back in my life–having just see my world collapse and watch me fight my way back over 9 months of cancer hell condensed into a tight 72 minute documentary. I almost cried reading the note. As our Irish luck would have it (our mothers are sisters and both have ties to the Old Sod) I had moved within an hour’s plane ride of her. Suddenly, magically, we were back.
It’s hard to put into words what our present friendship feels like for me. Though I’ve never had a long lost twin I can only imagine that this is a scratch-the-surface take on it. When I say that Sarah was my special cousin as a child I’m not gilding the lily–I’m dead serious. And when we lost touch it was one of those things that when people would say “do you have any regrets?” would pop up in my head, right along with dating that tall dark and dreary guy I wasted a year of my life on post college.
So as I write this blog I am happy to tell you that Sarah and I are about to embark on a trip together. It involves an airplane, a fancy hotel, miles of sandy beaches, and two girlfriends laughing it up. We haven’t been side by side holding hands and getting into trouble since we stole Nana’s pecan tarts from under Auntie Ann’s nose just before Christmas dinner back in 1975. But this friendship, pock-marked with my cancer, her failed marriage and our devastatingly long absence from the other’s life, is about to enjoy a rebirth like you read about in What To Expect When You’re Expecting.
And just like we used to, I’m expecting that the two of us are going to have a blast.
