I met each of them on my own journey: in high school, as a hippie, as a young mother, as a divorcée, as a single mother, in the business world, with one man or another. Sometimes, when I think of my life, I think of the girl who met Juliet and the hippie who met Vera and the struggling woman who met Charlene and the business woman who met Allie. It’s hard to put the different stages together as part of one woman’s life.

Me. The wife betrayed by a man, the wife who was widowed young. And now. Now. Two pregnant daughters. This house filled with hand-painted and -decorated walls of aubergine and beige and lavender and a decorated Christmas tree. Sometimes I can’t get my mind around the different versions of me, Marnie. And yet the friends who met the other adaptations of me through the decades are still part of my current life. It is as though my friends give testimony to my history. Witnesses, when we’re all together, to my whole existence. I love them as I love myself in all my varieties and aspects. And I love them for the spectacular women they are, each in her own way.

My eyes fill with emotion. And Allie, fresh lipstick on her thin lips, narrows her eyes at me, wondering what’s going on. She notices then the slight blue on my cheek still apparent under the yellow makeup. She tilts her head and touches her own face. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Bashed into a kitchen cabinet. Kitchen fury.” And I hug her. “I love you. I love you guys.”

I hear noises at the back door and Disney comes barreling through, bouncing up and down with eagerness, so excited he drops his monkey. Then there’s Tara’s voice. “Here we are,” she sings. “Hey, Disney. Cute scarf.” And then she says, softer, “We always come in through the back door.”

I am prepared to see Tara’s black hair, shot with cobalt, silver scattered over her face, but her hair is its original light red, no hoops, no makeup. “You look like you used to, like my little girl.” I laugh. “Took all the hardness and armament away.”

But Tara hasn’t meant to cast away her street persona and scowls. “Too much going on to bother with all that stuff.”

I lean toward her and kiss her. Clasp her to me as much as I can around the hard ball that will be my grandson. And she relaxes in my arms.

“I’m so happy to see you, honey.”

“It was a time getting here in this blowy snow.”