This weekend, I mentioned that I was headed to my Girls’ Night. I’ve written about this particular group of girlfriends before. Of which, I am the only black woman. Our friendship is a close-knit one. They were all friends at work for several years and ended up befriending me about a year after I started to work there. There are 6 of us total.  Although we’re slowly starting to all leave our one work location, we still make it a point to get together at least once a month, if not more.

Over the years, we’ve celebrated marriages, childbirth and job promotions. Mourned the deaths of parents and loved ones. Withstood diagnosis of diseases and even job loss. You name it , we’ve been there for each other. They were the women that I chose to be with the night President Obama accepted the Democratic nomination. In an earlier post, I recounted having an almost out-of-body experience watching my sister circle rush to leave the restaurant so that we could have cocktails and listen to Obama’s speech in the comfort on one of our sister’s home.  They seemed more excited than I was…even the two staunch Republicans in our crew.

On one hand, we have a lot in common. We are all extremely intelligent, multi-degreed, ambitious, family oriented GRITS (Girls Raised In The South). But I often find myself thinking, if this had been 100 or even 30 years ago, our friendship would have looked a lot different.

We’re close enough to have potentially sensitive racial debates. We’ve discussed the repercussions of slavery and how it affects the way our cultures relate to each other.   How it is STILL not cool to sing “Whistling Dixie” around black folk, even though YOUR people may have a completely different interpretation.  We even had the controversial “Stomp the Yard” convo this weekend. One of my girls is a member of the now famous-in-the-black-community infamous Ze.ta Ta.u Alph.a sorority. We jokingly “squashed the beef” over cast iron skillet pizza and Sprite. Even though ours is an easy friendship, there are times that I admit I feel a little uneasy.

Next month, we’re having our annual Garden Party as our get-together. One of our girls’ gardens will be in full spring bloom. We’ll sit on the patio in our sundresses or shorts, drink lemonade made from freshly squeezed lemons (possibly with a splash of vodka…compliments of Oprah – which is now our signature Girls’ Night In drink). We’ll listen to the birds chirp, giggle, laugh…and discuss our book of the month, The Help.

We chose that book because two of the girls were reading it. At first, they seemed a little embarrassed about bringing it up as a potential book discussion. But then, after a conversation we decided what the hell.

The irony is that the setting is Jackson, Mississippi in 1963. It chronicles the relationship between a black domestic and her white family. My grandmother (from Jackson) was a black domestic, whose family was a prominent member of Jackson’s political society. My mother was a senior in high school in 1963. Their relationship with the family is just as complex as I’m sure this one is in the novel.

I told my friends about how when my mother was a child, she slit her finger to show the white children in the family that she, too, had red blood. They had been told that black people’s blood was green. To this day, my mother is still ‘friends’ with the siblings. They call and write each other. They called my grandmother “mama” up until her death. And sometimes, my mother admits that she felt as though my grandmother took better care of those children than she did my mother…but that was the nature of her job. To be at their beck and call.

If you took an even deeper look, there was a loyalty on both sides.  When my mother was arrested as a high school senior for leading a protest after the death of Medgar Evers – the family made sure that she was safe (because her life was truly in danger – she has the cigarette burns and hose scars to prove it).  That’s how Mama SoJo ended up in Atlanta with her education paid for.

It’s a strange thing in the South. How we’re “family”, but a dysfunctional one. Our history is so complex. Love mixed with….something else. I think about how my sister circle’s children’s pictures are on my refrigerator and how I consider them my nieces, just as I do my black friend’s children.   I also think about how those children will probably consider me a second mother up until I’m old, feisty and gray-haired.  How my children will play with theirs at future Garden Parties.  We’ll sip lemonade in our sundresses, feel the breeze on our faces, laugh and giggle like GRITS have always done.  But my mind will always wander as I think about if our ancestors could have ever imagined us going from this*:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92kLpKuRJfo]
*CLICK THE LINK TO VIEW THE CLIP (EMBEDDING WAS DISABLED)

To this: