Cindy La Ferle insists that midlife is an exciting time for women. A veteran columnist in metro Detroit, she's widely recognized for her award-winning essays on home and family. These days she'll tackle almost any topic. Whether she's reinventing her empty nest or rehashing her political views, she believes the personal is universal -- and that the best is yet to come.

Margaret & Me
by Cindy La Ferle

"A good friend is someone who sees through you and still enjoys the view."
-- Wilma Askinas

   She’s the queen of the 15-minute phone message, and her rare visits to Detroit always feel like a holiday.
   When I first met Margaret, I was brushing my teeth in the community bathroom at Landon Hall, the all-girls dormitory where both of us lived during our first year at Michigan State University in 1973. A year later we decided to become roommates, and even shared an apartment after graduation. How Margaret managed to live with me at all remains one of life’s great mysteries. As the old adage goes, a good friend is one who knows us but loves us anyway, so I suppose that's the best way to explain Margaret and me.
   At MSU, I played chaotic Oscar to her meticulous Felix.  In those days Margaret dressed according to The Official Preppy Handbook; I favored gauzy tunic tops and jeans. Margaret stored her shoes in labeled boxes and stacked them in alphabetical order in her closet. I piled my clogs randomly on the floor where unsuspecting visitors could trip on them.  Living together was a major lesson for us both. Yet our friendship has logged countless miles and three eventful decades.
    Margaret was one of the first people I phoned, sobbing, after my dad’s fatal heart attack 16 years ago. She took two days off from her job in Chicago to fly to Detroit for his funeral. After her father lost his battle to cancer the following December, I traveled to her parents’ hometown in Pittsburgh for the wake. And I took a train to Chicago to hold her only daughter, Emily, two weeks after she was born.
    So I was thrilled last month when Margaret e-mailed to say that she and Emily would be driving back to Detroit to visit friends and relatives. When she asked if they could camp in our guest room for a night, I said yes before she finished her sentence -- even though I knew I’d have to scrub the house from top to bottom.  I couldn’t wait for their visit.
   The last time I’d seen little Emily, she was a precocious three-year-old who'd memorized all the lyrics to Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.” Now nine, she’s a girl after my own heart. During our recent visit, Emily and I formed an instant bond, discovering we’re both fans of Johnny Depp, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and baked potato soup.

A flash of the past    Like most kids, Emily couldn't imagine that her mom (or her mom's friends) had much of a life before motherhood. But I think she changed her mind when she watched Margaret and me double over in hysterics while recalling the streaking phase that hit college campuses in the late ‘70s. Though the two of us never had the guts to run across campus in our birthday suits, we shocked our folks with stories of naked students who'd jog through our dorm cafeteria at dinnertime. We also rehashed the time Margaret and several other girls in our dorm hid my bathrobe and towel while I was taking a shower -- leaving me no other choice but to walk down the long hall back to my room wrapped in paper towels and toilet paper.
   Emily was an incredibly good sport while her mother and I chatted about old times at MSU, so after dinner we let her choose the DVD for our pajama party. Emily opted for Johnny Depp’s Edward Scissorhands. Snuggling close to me during “the scary parts,” she reminded me how much I missed having younger kids around.
   I swore I wouldn’t cry when Margaret and Emily packed their car and headed back to Chicago. But I did, anyway. Long-distance relationships are hard to maintain, especially these days, when few of us have time to wave at our neighbors. Despite cell phones and e-mail, there’s a lot of ground we simply cannot cover.
   After Margaret left Michigan, we missed a lot of critical events in each other’s lives. She wasn’t here to cheer my recovery from two hip surgeries, or to celebrate my only son’s high school graduation. And I wasn’t there to admire the gifts Margaret opened at her baby shower, or to hold her hand at the nursing home while she watched her mother’s heartbreaking decline from Parkinson’s.
   But I was reminded during our recent visit that the bond we formed in our early college years won’t easily unravel. And the young girls we once were – the girls who’d met in the community bathroom at Landon Hall -- have traveled with us all along.

---
Cindy La Ferle writes on home, family, and women's issues from Royal Oak, where she is Writer-in-Residence for her public library. Writing Home, her award-winning collection of stories on motherhood and women's issues, is available on Amazon.com and is distributed nationally to bookstores by Wayne State University Press. Proceeds from Cindy's book sales are donated to shelters serving the homeless in Oakland County, Michigan.

Visit Cindy La Ferle's Home Office and Blog: www.laferle.com You may also contact her directly at cindy@laferle.com