My friends

I have a lot of friends here. No more than anyone else, but a full plate and then some, nonetheless. Most of us didn't know each other eight years ago, yet I cannot imagine myself without them anymore.

One thing that happens when you move far away from family and your life history is that the new friends you make become your family. In many cases they are better family than blood family.

The same thing happened to me in university and then when I went to work in cities far from where I grew up.

Over time I have collected quite an impressive group of people I feel honoured to call my friends. I have had more crazy experiences with almost every one of them. That was particularly true of the friends I found in university -- both in undergrad and grad school. I could write volumes on our escapades but I won't because I don't want to go to jail or get sent to a penal colony (do they still have those things?).

I really didn't think that life could get any better than my university years with respect to having great people in my life. And that was true for many years. I did make some great friends during my years in Toronto but most of the time we were all busy working and building careers and that didn't leave much time for bonding on a higher level. There were definitely moments -- like the Great Muffin Caper of 1987 and the Are Any Media Going To Show At My Press Conference crisis of 1990 -- but they didn't come as fast and furious as they had previously.

However, that all changed when I moved to Israel. I often sit in synagogue on Friday nights and look across the room at a huge selection of my new friends. I sit in the same section every week and it gives me a great vantage point from which to review my life in people.

When I first arrived, going to synagogue was a dreaded event because I felt so alone. Now, it takes all the focus I can muster just to get home in time for dinner after the Friday night service. My children and husband have totally given up on me. They just leave when they are ready and I guess they assume I will surface in the kitchen sooner or later. They probably figure that at some point I will get hungry enough to come home and feed us all.

The other night a group of my friends and I were all at a jewelry show in another friend's penthouse apartment. As two of us left the show, a few others yelled out to wait for them. As we all entered the elevator, everyone was talking at once. We probably continued this way for about a minute or two before someone noticed that the elevator wasn't moving.

We had been so busy talking en mass that no one had bothered to push the button to the ground floor. When we realized it, everyone burst into laughter. And it was at that moment that I was struck by the realization that I can't believe how lucky I am to live among such good people.

We have schlepped to Haifa via train and bus to see the Bahai Gardens. We have held surprise parties on the beach. We sit down at bar mitzvahs and weddings never worried about who will be at our table because it just doesn't matter. We eat communal holiday meals. Our kids all manage to play together regardless of their age differences. We have celebrated each others birthdays. We have cried together at the funerals of friends who died too soon. We have cooked for people we don't even know. We have raised money for all sorts of causes. And we have done all these things together.

In fact, we have become a family. And in true family fashion, we have dumped our kids on each others' door steps without notice. We haven't worried about babysitters because we know that if worse comes to worse, our kids can always sleep over at the home of someone who wasn't going out for the evening. We have borrowed eggs, flour, sugar, wine, and divvied up a salad when one person didn't have one and another had more than enough for lunch.

One year, we unintentionally all went on Chanuka vacation together. Nothing like getting to the foyer of the Royal Beach Hotel in Eilat in time to light the Chanuka candles just to find that everyone else you know is there doing the same thing.

I know that my last few posts have been rather moribund but I am having a melancholy phase and now you all have to experience it with me. That is the price of readership. But the truth is, in true friend fashion, I know that most of you are reading along and nodding your heads. You remember the same things that I do and you also know how lucky we are to have such good friends.