Family Day was declared a holiday after I separated by the association of people who like to pour salt in wounds.

As bad luck would have it, my dear friend Sam’s marriage fell apart a year after mine. As good luck would have it, she bought the house just behind mine. We both work from home, have two girls of the same age and at the same school and we both love life. We live 48 sidewalk squares from each other-  counted immediately after purchase .  We are enormous support to one another.

Weekly we cook for one another, dine with one another and run errands for one another. Our dinners have laughter and tears- everyone is invited to table a dilemma or share a story. Who should pay to replace the keyboard  when OJ was  spilled through out, goals, thrills and mistakes, dads and girlfriends breaking up, too much schoolwork, misbehaving at school dances,  great and beautiful things that have happened for the moms, or what a fair amount of chores would be.  Before a date we borrow clothes, we run business ideas past one another, we listen, we talk, we help carry, we wrestle each other’s Christmas trees into the stands, if we buy too much of something we share with the other. Mainly, we buy too much so that we can share.  Our children call the other one ‘my second mom’.

Our meals together are always an event- a full table of laughter, animation and too much to eat.  As Sam says,   “every meal a banquet”.

This is  family too.