Why Can’t Men Be Alone?

My daughter and her husband are separated at the moment, because his work has taken him half a world away. She and their boys will be joining him at the end of the school term, which is three months away. She was telling me he is very lonely and hates it. He doesn’t know anyone in a strange country and is living in a rented apartment  and eating meals in a restaurant. Meanwhile, she’s back in Canada trying to manage three boys and a big house and school and hockey practices and would kill for a restaurant meal. We wondered together why men can’t be alone.

Sisters

   

  My sister and I spent the past week doing what sisters who haven’t seen one another for more than a year do… we shopped. We shopped for six days. We shopped for six hours a day for six days. On the seventh day we rested and talked about our shopping.  As women everywhere will understand, this constitutes a good visit. Shopping with a close female friend or relative is not  about commerce. It is not about the exchange of money for goods. If goods are found; if the goods found are great goods; if the great goods make us look younger, slimmer, richer, rounder, prettier, smarter, classier, funkier, friendlier; if the great goods that make us look younger, slimmer, richer, rounder, prettier, more intelligent, classier, funkier, friendlier are on sale, shopping is elevated from the pedestrian to the sublime. It is a symphony of endorphins, celebration and goodwill that sets the stage for the real business of shopping… the exchange of information.

How do you break up with a group of friends?

  I have five good women friends — one I’ve known for 25 years; one I’ve known for eight years; the rest fall in between. We’re a disparate group ranging in age from 30-something to 60-something. Three are married and three used to be married. One of us is without children; the rest of us have 12 between us; three have grandchildren. The common link is work — once upon a time we all worked together and enjoyed it.