Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time, there was a group of about two dozen girls.

Or hundreds, really, but this post is about a special two dozen or so. Probably fewer although I haven't really stopped to count.

Back in the olden days, of 1999 and early 2000, I joined an iVillage group called....um....brain lapse....something about Weddings 2000. Or Planning Your Wedding. Or something of that nature. Bottom line, everyone on this international message board was newly engaged and planning a soon-to-be-wedding.

And there I met them. The women who'd see me through good times and bad, happy and sad, the vast majority of whom I've never met, yet would count among my closest friends.

I was embarrassed at first. Friends with people I'd never met?  Never seen, never had lunch with? Bah-humbug, I first thought.

Then we discussed bridesmaid dress colors. There was me, who only had one (pregnant) bridesmaid and let her choose her own dress, to L, who had at least a dozen bridesmaids at her sophisticated ceremony and had them wear a shade barely distinguishable between "silver" and "pewter." And  we posted hundreds of threads over whether a sit-down dinner or a buffet was the better option for an evening reception for 200. And whether our engagement rings were the stuff dreams were made of. And if our dads, or both parents, would walk us down the aisle. We argued over vows (do we, as women of the new millenium, say "obey?"). We argued over honeymoon destinations. We heatedly discussed combined finances, shared surnames and destination weddings.

After a year or so, we were mostly married, many of us within several weeks, or days, of each other. We "graduated" to another message board, Beginning a Marriage.

There we pontificated over dual income households, shared holidays with in-laws, shared chores, different schedules, shoes left in the middle of the bedroom floor and flannel sheets versus cotton. Always the message board was our inner sanctum. Just the girls. No boys allowed. No holds barred because we didn't have a stake in each other in real life. Or did we?

It didn't take long before THE TOPIC was broached. TTC was first and foremost on our minds. If you don't know your message board acronyms, or if you're  man reading this blog post, TTC is "trying to conceive." In short, we had baby fever.

Because many of the details of TTC are too personal for a public forum, we, the group of about two dozen who had that magical online connection over the years, started a new message board, a private group, for only us.

On that board, saying "no holds barred" is probably the understatement of the first decade of the new millennium. If it was to be discussed, we talked about it.

In great detail.

I will not divulge all here, I'm saving that for my tell-all book, but suffice it to say we knew the most intimate details of each other's lives.

We started our families. We were there, online, posting at 3 a.m. when another mom was there, online, at 3 a.m. posting. We talked each other through labor, childbirth, the first weeks with baby, milestones, vaccinations, discipline, sibling issues, teething, breastfeeding, bottlefeeding, changing diapers, dads who didn't help, dads who did. I always knew that if I needed support, or a real opinion, I'd go to THE BOARD.

I talked about these ladies as if I'd just seen them at a playdate earlier in the day. And in fact, THE BOARD became a 24-hour, multi-year playdate.

We saw each other through births. Miscarriages. Trying to conceive. Secondary infertility (mine). Children with disabilities (Curt with autism, another boy, E, born 5 weeks later, also with autism (his momma is a rock star); a little girl with a tethered cord (her mom is the most laid back momma I know) and various other developmental challenges). We saw each other through natural disasters (wait - those were mine too and I DELIGHTED in spending the Pier 1 gift certificate the girls gave me after Hurriance Ike). We had a member who worked in World Trade 7 "lost" for several hours on 9/11. Her TTC chart, on her office calendar, was lost with so many other lives and valuables on that day. Luckily, she was not. We saw each other through preterm births (K is a champion) and adoptions (M has two birth boys and a beautiful girl chosen with her heart). We kicked two people off (too much drama) and lost one or two others to personality conflicts, beause, let's face it, when you get a group of more than two girls together, there's drama. A few of us got divorced. Others have endured marriage challenges of the nth degree. We stopped having new children and got the ones we have off to school. We went back to work. Or stayed home. Or became self-employed. Or championed the poor economy. We have been together through breast cancer, through lupus, though depression, through the loss of parents. We have members in each corner of the country and everywhere in between.

In the past two years, I'd say, traffic to THE BOARD has dropped off considerably. And then, A had the brilliant idea to start a new private group, on a site most of us frequent. It brought tears to my eyes to reconnect with these ladies, whose lives have been so intrinsically linked with mine over the past TEN, count them, TEN years. I've only met a handful of them. I'd LOVE to meet them all. I'd love to go to a Buffet concert with L or MN. I'd love to scrapbook and exchange snarky comments with MG. I HAVE loved meeting A and spending time in her home. I'd travel to California in a New York minute to meet S or L. I think getting together with T in Florida would be enlightening. I had a blast in Seattle with J and MW. K contracted work with me in past years and is soooooo smart I think I'd be intimidated to try to talk to her! E is my kindred spirit in the Northeast and LM, who is embarking on her new life, is an inspiration. SL has an amazing new job! JH was my TTC buddy with my No. 3 (which as you know didn't happen) and her No. 2, who is beautiful, just like her momma. I credit her with keeping my spirits up every time I had to POAS and it was a BFN. If you don't know those acronyms, I'm not telling. ;-)

I'm glad we're all back together. I hope we stay together. We will take a Carribean cruise someday together, when the kids are all old enough to stay at home. ;-) I do plan to write a book about you all someday. You are the most colorful, vivid, strong, well-defined, spirited, smart, diverse and beautiful group of girls I have ever known. If you are ever in East Texas. Call me. Until then, look for yourself in a future bestseller.

All names will be changed to protect the owner of the egg whites.