The Apple Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree

Years ago, back when I was in my twenties and very different from the person lurking inside me, I had a best friend named Mary with whom I did everything. Both single working girls, we lived across the street from one another and shared our pursuit of what I call the Three Ms: movies, music and men. We vacationed together often in Florida and New York, and I visited her family home in Michigan. We laughed a lot. We shared stories about our respective shrinks and supported one another during tough times, meaning our latest boyfriends and break-ups. We were a perfect match!

Things went swimmingly for us for more than a decade, until we each got married to very different men who did not share the love. This disparity eventually caused a fissure in our friendship that widened into a chasm, until one Sunday morning over bagels and lox, and with our young toddlers in tow, it exploded into a volcanic eruption inside a coffee shop in lower Manhattan. End of friendship.

Several years later I ran into my old friend who turned out to be living a few miles from me, just over the border from our Washington, D.C. home in the wealthy enclave of Chevy Chase, Maryland. She invited me over for lunch, which I gladly accepted, eager to possibly rekindle the friendship. But alas, it was not meant to be, mostly because I was appalled at the squandered wealth tucked into every nook and cranny of her enormous home.

It was painfully obvious time had changed both of us: while I had busied myself writing newspaper articles, painting and delivering meals to shut-ins on weekends, she had spent all her time shopping. As we toured her grand home, the last straw for me was the master bedroom. Mary was currently involved in having wall-to-wall carpeting hand-made with a border to match the curtains and bedspread in her boudoir, the very one she shared with her creepy husband she had never liked in the first place but who was independently wealthy due to a family inheritance.

Mary and I each had one child, quite close in age, who played together as kids. Today her daughter lives in Los Angeles and has made her career as a "home stager," decorating multi-million dollar properties for sale in Beverly Hills. My son lives in Maine, buys his clothes at the thrift shop and teaches classes on how to live off the land.

Funny how we were two peas in a pod all those years ago.