Pondering the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

I just finished reading the third book in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series by Ann Brashares. I read the first book over a year ago for a short-lived book club I was in with some women from work, and I liked it. Saw the movie. But then kind of forgot about it for a while, until something sparked the memory and I was inspired to order the next books from the library. I read Book Two a few weeks ago, and Book Three last weekend. And I had to ask myself, what is it about these really rather silly books that I like so much?

For the uninitiated, the Pants series is about a group of four girls whose mothers met in a prenatal aerobics class in the 80's. They have been inseparable since birth, and at the start of the first book they are about to spend their first summer apart. They find a pair of jeans in a thrift store that miraculously not only fits them all but makes them all look fantastic--truly miracle pants. For the most part, the stories are fluffy, although there are births and deaths and betrayals and family dramas galore. The stories live in a place outside of time, for the most part. There is little or no mention of the world outside of the small universe inhabited by their families and the boys who love them.

I didn't like being a teenager. My teenage years were much more akin to the experience of Anne Lamott as related in Operating Instructions, where she talks about coming close to regretting bringing her son into the world because she realized one day he would have to experience junior high school. These girls are all beautiful in their assorted yet mostly conventional ways and they mostly struggle with loving the guys who love them back. Perhaps it's partially that fantasy element that attracts me and pulls me in and--I admit it--leaves me with tears running down my cheeks.

Although that may be true, I think there is something else as well. Perhaps in this world, where it sometimes seems so hard to connect with people in a genuine way, it is the story of real friendship that is the magnet. Friends who will stick with you through anything life will send you. Friends who are not just friends of the moment, but friends you know will be yours for the rest of your days.

It's too late to go back in time and create a friendship that started at birth, although I do feel grateful to have one friend I've known as long as I can remember. We weren't terribly close in high school as we kind of went off in different directions. But we've ended up more similar to each other than the close friends I had in high school, but although she lives less than 20 miles away I don't see or talk to her often. I saw her on her birthday--just dropped by to drop off a little something to mark her birthday, which was rather a milestone one. And she was telling me that one of her strongest female connections is with her part-time nanny, who will soon be moving on to other things. And even weirder, that she had envied me, for being able to bring together the group of friends I got together to see a movie and have dinner for my birthday last year. It's a strange world.

A friend and I are working on starting a women's circle (OK, it's mostly my friend doing the work, bless her), and I'm hopeful that through that we can experience more vital connections with other women. I think it's important, vitally important, that we make those connections, although it is not easy in the midst of busy lives. But I guess that few things that are truly worthwhile come easily. So onward we press.