The Beginning

Alone in Orange County

The escapades of a sweet professional’s search for her tribe, and the parade of ridiculousness that ensues

The Beginning

Everyone needs a tribe.  A close inner circle of intimate relationships in whose context life unfolds and is experienced in all its richness.  A group in which our deepest vulnerabilities can be strengthened, our humor understood, and meals can be shared, with the expectation that at some point the laughter will bring tears, or at the very least a spitting of champagne across the room.  We spend our developing years forming this tribe, and our adult years nurturing it and relishing in it.  But what happens when a tribe disperses?  When bonds of love are made or broken, jobs lost or found, lives disrupted by geographical shifts?  Can a tribe be rebuilt midlife, when everyone else is suddenly so busy with careers, changing diapers, coaching little league, or just hanging out with a tribe that doesn’t include you?  This is the journey of a professional woman in search of a new tribe.  Before we begin, however, I suppose it is best to explain how I came to be Alone in Orange County.

I had a tribe.  I also had a marriage, and in 2010 we relocated to Orange County to be closer to my husband’s family and friends.  It was the perfect arrangement.  Until I discovered the unthinkable.  Within months of settling in Newport, we separated and embarked on what was unfortunately a long and senseless battle.  But throughout it all, I had my tribe.  My girls.  They poured my wine, cried when I cried, yelled when I yelled, reminded me how much better off I’d be, and walked through every awful day with me.  Because that’s what a tribe does.  Let me tell you all about my girls.

First, there is Veronica.  We attended the same preschool, but since we were only three, our first memories of each other are from kindergarten.  I remember The Circus in particular, quite clearly in fact, but also quite incorrectly.  In my recollection I was a lion and V the ringmaster, but she swears to this day she was a tightrope walker who actually stayed home with a fever that day.  I suppose in the course of my decades-long friendship with her, I have always seen her as my leader. 

I believe it was somewhere around the age of 13 or 14 our brains one day magically enmeshed, and we became so much alike it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.  Our families used to play Pictionary together, and I distinctly remember the night V walked to the giant board and drew a single arch with her pencil.  From across the room I hollered, “Hunchback of Notre Dame!” and her father, a meticulous engineer, began his accusations of cheating.  Until she later drew someone strapped in a car with a seat belt, next to a nail (“Safety pin!”—and no, not even I understood why she didn’t just draw a safety pin), followed by what appeared to be a double arch (“Radar!”), at which point the room grew still as our parents wondered how we could be twins separated at birth when we clearly had different mothers.  We had the same clothes, the same bangs, the same crushes, the same love of animals.  We chased after lizards, made up code words, spent long days together at school, followed by long nights on the phone (saying only our totally nonsensical code words, understandably driving our parents crazy).

                                                    V's "safety pin," circa 1989

V is wickedly smart, has an evil sense of humor, knows every word to every song by The Cure, Depeche Mode and…every 80s and 90s song ever written (including The Dead Milkmen, hello).  She has interviewed Sir Richard Branson, birthed the most adorable son, and co-invented with me the BEST champagne cocktail ever.  I’m not gonna lie; it took quite a bit of taste testing to get it just right.  But we somehow managed to persevere.

Kelly bounced (literally—she’s very bouncy) into my life sometime around 2007, when I was still married, at my husband’s best friend’s wedding.  They all grew up together, so as I was standing alone at a reception of 300 people waiting for the wedding party to finish photos, she came bouncing (see?  I told you) up and introduced herself, announcing how excited she was to meet me.  I will never forget the first words out of her mouth: “I hear you’re really smart!  Yay!  I love smart girls!”  Her enthusiasm is infectious.  She is genuine, generous, opinionated, direct, and one of the few people I have never seen show any unkindness whatsoever.  There is no malice within her.  She is a woman who makes things happen.  She single-handedly planned her high school reunion without breaking a sweat.  She holds an advanced degree but is down to earth, and can hold a conversation with anyone, anywhere, about anything.  She also happens to be a magnet for young law students.  We don’t know why, but everywhere we go, one finds her and falls immediately in love.  Its actually quite remarkable.

Melissa is a more recent addition.  We had actually communicated via email regarding a research project in the past.  When we randomly met in person, her name sounded familiar, but what struck me more so than the coincidence of our previous link through research was her confidence and friendliness.  She is simply engaging.  She knows how to hold her own in the Big Boys Network, without sacrificing a molecule of her femininity.  She never loses her cool.  She cries unabashedly.  She’s practical and wise.  She taught me how to drink a martini, and forces me to the makeup counter every chance she gets.  Our friendship was built on long walks and endless conversations.  She is well-read and infinitely interesting, warm, maternal, and naughty. 

The final addition to our OC tribe came in 2011, brought to the group by Kelly.  Lana and Kelly met at a dance class and of course Lana loved Kelly immediately (I’m sure it was her bounce), and they became fast friends.  We loved our addition; Lana is beautiful, quirky (seriously, who has to use GPS to go to the same familiar places over and over?), thoughtful and sweet.

For years we had a bubble of bliss.  Not that life was always kind, mind you—we had a divorce, health scares, breakups, biopsies, family emergencies and a nervous pregnancy.  But we also had champagne, girls’ weekends, manicures, makeovers, late-night talks by the fire.  We had each other.  Until, M fell in love and moved up north; L decided to choose a dramatic exit from our drama-free group; V’s husband was transferred to the Midwest; K fell in love and moved with her boyfriend to LA.  I was left Alone in Orange County, semi-buffered by a then-boyfriend from the full weight of the geographic loss of my girls, one by one.  And then the boyfriend.  And then I was Alone.