The Hen Party

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We gather one evening near Christmas, as we have for some years now, and as we will for many more, come snow, sleet, hail, or 21st century worse. Postal workers have got nothing on us. We are seven ordinary women (extraordinary, by some measures), brought together by one truly uncommon one. The bright and beautiful Marianne is the reason why our lives have intersected at all—six degrees of connectedness.

We are an unlikely group. The oldest friendship dates back to elementary school and years spent at Our Lady of Perpetual Laughter. Another began postcollege at the ladies’ residence we winkily call The Home for Wayward Women. One of us came on board via a dysfunctional but technicolor ad agency, another from an earnest and prescient involvement in the Big Sister organization, and yet another while shuffling off to Buffalo in a tap dance class.

We include a corporate lawyer, an illustrator, the manager of a hair salon, a magazine editor, a retail maven, a writer, and a proud, chic French woman who has dug her extremely high heels into the terra firma that is the U.S. of A. We have been gainfully employed, self-employed, and unemployed. We are liberal and conservative, risk takers and safe players. Five of us are married; three have children. One had twins, and one had cancer—the inexplicable work of the gods.

We seven are as likely to encounter each other at the baggage carousel at Kennedy Airport as at an intimate party. And that’s what makes our gathering all the more remarkable. We align at Christmas. We call it “The Hen Party.” We arrive at Marianne’s Manhattan apartment independently, shivering in the December cold. One of us comes from two miles away, one from two city blocks away, another travels the distance of two states.

We greet each other joyfully, if nervously at first. Wine is poured, cider for some. New haircuts are admired; photos of young children are shared. It’s been a year since we’ve seen each other. For ten minutes it will feel like forever; in twenty it will feel like ten minutes. Each of us had wanted to look great for our reunion, applying make-up and choosing clothes more thoughtfully than we do for dates with husbands or lovers, but half an hour in we’re weeping with laughter, mascara be damned.

There’s a year’s worth of catching up to do. There are new stories—the best of the best from each of us, and across a wide swath—family, politics, ethics, men. And there are requests, demands even, for retellings of our greatest hits (the story about the ex-boyfriend who turned out to be a member of the Russian mob remains a hen party classic).