Miss Attacks

My mom, a former preschool teacher, has a special name for just about everything - usually a cutesy one. Some of them are Southern colloquialisms; others are uniquely hers. After decades of hearing these phrases, I toss them about in conversation as though everyone knows what surcies and eskimo kisses and miss attacks are.

Today, though, I am experiencing something that can only be explained by its Mom name, an absolute "miss attack."

As Erin alluded to in her post yesterday, many of the closest friendships we twenty-somethings have are with friends from a very specific time in our life. Women we met in college, grad school, our first job, the newlywed years. These particular seasons are such intense, change-filled times that we bond deeply with the friends we make at that point. It's an intimacy hard to recreate with people we meet casually, outside of those moments in our lives.

The trouble comes when life moves you and your close friends a bit apart, when you're no longer in a cozy apartment with four sorority sisters or sharing a cute house with another new grad roommate. What do you do then, when you need your best friends right next door, not two states away?

Erin's right, you can add friends and meet couples who expand your social circle as time goes by. Those friends are invaluable, people who add you to their invite list even when a baby keeps you off the scene and come over for quiet dinners when life slows down.

But when having a "miss attack," you realize how irreplaceable each close friend is in your life - how God seems to have hand-picked just the right people for you. And how very much you wish you all lived on the same block again, sharing a pool, carpooling to the Fresh Market for jelly beans and swapping gossip magazines. (These days it might be Southern Living and Parents magazine, but the idea's the same.)

Today I'm missing a very dear, very pregnant friend of mine and wishing I could be one lounge chair away, chatting mindlessly about Gossip Girl, what her sweet boy will look like and how quickly I can get her another glass of lemonade.

What gets you through a miss attack? Skype? Marathon phone sessions? Last-minute airplane trips?