You Would See, The Biggest Gift Would Be From Me, and the Card Attached Would Say...

Alright, Universe. I have something to say to you. This has been a bad week. I'd let it slide if it was just a personal thing, really I would. My own bad week isn't really your fault--that sits squarely on the shoulders of two men I wish would have just married each other and left me out of it. Them and that smoke detector that started beeping at 4 this morning and wouldn't stop even after unplugging and battery removal. I won't blame you, Universe, for my failure to keep those stupid square batteries on hand. But I might blame you, just for kicks, for even allowing crap like that to happen to single mothers. I mean really.

I've had a lot of bad weeks in my life; I'd imagine most of us have. But until recently, I've gone with the Simon & Garfunkel method of dealing with the bad stuff:

I am a rock.

I am an island.

A rock feels no pain,

and an island never cries.

Turns out, rocks and islands are not happy people. Why, they're not even people at all, you say. Astute observation. They're not people. I wasn't a people. More to the point, I didn't have people. No, that's not even true. I had people, but I didn't use them. Not the way your people are meant to be used. How tired are you of the word people? Ugh. It's gotten to the point of sounding like a complete nonsense word, hasn't it?

So let's replace it with the word friends. That's one of Ayana's favorite words. Everyone is "friends" to her. The kids at the pool with the toys (because they have better parents than Ayana, who came to the pool with no toys at all), the kids at the park with the ball (see previous parenthetical), and the kids at the McDonald's playplace with the ice cream (I'm going to go with "I'm the better parent" on that one). She's got all the friends. Friends coming out her ears.

I know what you're thinking. Those relationships are shallow! They aren't friends, they're just kids with stuff she wants! Let me remind you, hypothetical Judgy McJudgerpants, Ayana is two. She isn't capable of making a distinction between friends. There's no hierarchical structure in her world. Kid she's played with since birth: friend. Kid she's played with since four seconds ago: friend. BFFs.

I'm cool with that right now. Developmentally, I would be foolish to expect more from her. But I'll be saddened by it if, at age 10 or 17 or 28, she hasn't learned that friends are worth way more than the stuff they have that you want.

Friends call you when you say you're having a bad week, even though they're driving to work after buying a new car because the old one had one of two roofs that caved in this week due to latent damage from Sandy. Friends hike through bear country with you, laughing when you say "kids are annoying" just as a kid rounds the corner. Friends offer to fill out your Medicaid paperwork because you claim to have a paperwork phobia (that's a thing, right?!). Friends keep up pen pal campaigns between their illiterate daughter and yours. Friends send cards all the time, stuffed with 10-year-old memorabilia that only friends would think to keep. Friends take your daughter strawberry picking and let her play with your beard while you watch ET in the park. Friends have bad weeks the same time you do, and friends know that sometimes it's better to skip yoga and just grouse about how rough it is over a bottle (ok, two) of wine.       

So, Universe. What I really want to say to you is this: Thank you for reminding us we need each other. Thank you for reminding us to be grateful for things we take for granted. And thank you for encouraging us to drink a little and eat pizza and watch movies in the park, in our alliance against your capriciousness.

And to those of you reading this who can, let's finish the Andrew Gold lyric together, as so many have since the great, almost all late, Golden Girls graced the screen. 

Thank you for being a friend.