Amy C. My first overnight at a friend’s house that couldn’t be seen from my own. It was 7th grade, my first year in junior high, when your world explodes beyond the fifty kids you’ve known since kindergarten. I don’t recall what her mom made us for dinner but I do remember lying in Amy’s bed watching Psycho for the first time. It all felt so adult and as I snuggled happily into my sleeping bag on the floor that night, I resolved to do this as often as I could. Maybe, although only five miles from my home, this was the beginning of my traveling Joneses.
Friday night I had another sleepover, this time at my best friend’s lovely new place. Instead of a black and white Hitchcock classic while eating popcorn and surrounded by Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett posters, we saw Oceans 8 while having cocktails and dinner at the Movie Tavern. We talked late into the night, that hasn’t changed, although now “late” is 10 p.m. But talk we did, about everything and anything. Somehow we never run out of things to share and laughter is always the third person in the room. But we also revisited all the really rough things we’ve both been through and I had to wonder: how did real life become scarier than a horror movie?
Granted neither of us have been stabbed at in the shower by a madman but trust me when I say life hasn’t caused us nightmares, at times it has BEEN an actual nightmare. But the difference between Marion Crane (Janet Leigh’s character’s name in the 1960 film) and us is that we have never been alone in our terrifying moments, in those times when everything but was at risk, when figuratively we lay bloodied and naked, fighting to survive. We had someone with us, reminding us that the next breath was all that was required of us and that we would get through whatever lay ahead together.
I fully realize this post has gone to a sappy love story genre but if Marion Crane had been on a girls’ trip when that well, psycho, came to her room, I have no doubt she would have made it. It would have become a part of their history, recounted during future grown-up pajama parties and stand as another testament to a sisterhood that has stood the test of time. Crazy men. Medical challenges. Death. Tragedy. Disability. There’s not an overnight bag that can handle all that. But I am beyond blessed to have a friendship that can.
