A Salute to Galentine’s Day

My Best Friend is my Boyfriend Until I Get One

Galentine’s Day | Illustration by Devo Cutler

On the eve of Galentine’s Day I received a bumpy package in the mail — these days, I’ve gotten used to life delivering bumpy packages, but this was unexpected. It was a wreath of fake flowers.

“Hmmm, really?” My first response was to be annoyed — “I did not order this!” Then I saw a card attached to the ribbon-crafted wire, pastel roses, cloth leaves, and baby’s breath. A faux crown, but the message was real: “A gift for you (Amazon-speak),” then, “The light comes from you, but it should also come to you, Queen D. From Caronsky.” As you may guess, Caron is my best friend (certainly one of them).

Both of us are currently single, and we like to imagine future fantasy double-dates with the charming-hunky-kind-smart guys we meet in the future. We weigh in on each other’s romantic escapades — or lack thereof. We constantly spark debates on any and every topic, and as with all my women-friends, we are committed to sharing our life’s woes and wins.

With Caron, there is a bit deeper vein due to our daily contact. We talk on the phone or texts, share amusing, pithy links, photos, and updates. There is a desired depth to our honesty about all that’s evolving in our lives. You might say she is the President of my Fan Club, and, conversely, the Questioning Sphinx Guardian at the gate of my actions — celebrating me for who I am on the one hand, and then stopping me from making stupid choices on the other. She also has special mystical powers that can make things “all okay.”

Before I go on about how best friends, especially galfriends, have a role that is critical in our survival as a species — you might be wondering what is “Galentine’s Day? Is that even a real holiday?”

It is. A portmanteau of the words ‘gal’ and ‘valentine’, it was co-created by Leslie Knope (played by writer-producer Amy Poehler) on the Parks & Recreation comedy series. The galiday’s birth is season 2, episode 15. The holiday since found its way onto our galendars, and in Poehler’s words, “It’s the best day of the year!”

Caron, left, and Devo, then | Photo: Courtesy

Personally, any chance to acknowledge sisterly love, our sisters-from-another-mother bond is something Plato espoused … well between guys. Like fraternal love, the galfriends in our lives have a penchant for being our gladiatrixes, fighting the negativity in all aspects of our lives. These brave warrior-women in our lives somehow say the right thing at the right time to make anything bad seem almost “all better.” They perpetuate the “what’s the lesson underneath this challenge?” Or, in other words, BFFs proffer the “silver-lining to every dark cloud” theory.

And I have some very special galfriends. And, somewhat jokingly, we try to be each other’s boyfriend — until we get one. That means listening, sometimes a hug, even light handholding to comfort emotional, spiritual, and/or physical aches and pains. Our love language might include late night “buddy calls” (not booty calls) to catch up. At times we send each other flowers, even when we have boyfriends to do that. For us gals, getting each other flowers and little gifts are par for the course.

Sisterly love language can be any one of the five oft debated but recognized expressions of human love. It doesn’t matter what the chosen methods are to show we care — from affirming words, special time, gifts, touch (unromantic but play flirting), or service to the world — they all work as reinforcing gal love. And they are an all-around touchdown with caring.

Caron and I didn’t start out as loyal best friends who share our respective rocky roads or give each other the life-saving hand up-and-out from some of the tail-spinning hell we’ve encountered. Caron is Black, a Buddhist, and St. Louisian. I am white, kinda-Jewish, and a Hollywoodian now in Ojai. We are both teachers, and through our student outreach, we are committed to eradicating inequity. As a Black child growing up in the mid-southern U.S., even as a member of the gifted education programs, Caron suffered blatant racism through name-calling and bullying. For me, as a Jew, I’ve been spit on, and one Alabamian, while I was on a cruise, asked to touch my horns, which she was positive were there. (In Caron’s words, “You can’t fix stupid.”)

We both love and celebrate the freedoms our ancestors fought for. Perhaps not widely publicized enough, Jews and Blacks marched side-by-side during the Civil Rights movement. We both love that the month of February represents “LOVE!” A month that shares Cupid’s Day with Abe Lincoln’s and Frederick Douglas’ birthdays. Also, in Caron’s case, her son and her grandson’s birthdays. And, in my case, it’s the birthday month for my grandmom, a favorite cousin, and my stepdaughter!

Our thoughtfulness to each other often includes others. This year at Christmas, when her 96-year-old mom Dorothy moved back to her St. Louis home, I sent her a self-lighting 30-inch Christmas tree. Dorothy (I call her my other mother) had been one of my laugh partners, and I wanted her to have the tree to brighten her new home. In the same time frame Caron, unbeknownst to me, sent my 92-year-old mom a gift certificate for books and a book reading stand. My mom always grabs my phone from me if Caron and I are talking to send her love. My mom is Caron’s other mother. By the way, quid-pro quo does not enter into our idea of fairness. These things just happen out of a kind of love serendipity.

Caron and I originally met in 2012 through a master’s writing program at USC. We also met our gal-bud Sharon there, and the three of us recently celebrated one of my publications. Both of them were also there five years ago, in those first few awful weeks, taking the devastated shell of me out to dinner, days after my husband passed.

Caron, left, and Devo, more recently | Photo: Courtesy

Since my husband’s death, I’ve been recovering from a substantial amount of personal hell. Granted, personal hell is relative, and like it or not, a part of life. Despite our very different roads to get here as friends, Caron and I bonded over a lot of common ground. We both came in with a fair amount of distrust of humanity, probably based on early trauma. Both of us had worked on ourselves to break certain patterns of thinking that may have stemmed from our traumas. We both turned to the arts as one modality to heal, acknowledging that fear can limit our perceptions. Daily we are grateful that past traumas did not seem to taint our future dreams or sense of hope for humankind’s future. Caron and I are best friends because she holds me to my highest possibility for being a good human. She continues to “feed” my love Jones and continues to paint an indelible mark on my heart.

I thank God for girlfriends. Without them I do not think I could have survived the crippling losses. With them all love can flourish. For each bouquet we send each other on any day of the galendar, we add that motherly/sisterly quotient that can fill any void in our love tanks. As in the case with my galfriends, we even repair and reparent each other from those earlier traumas.

Another benefit of our galship is, I believe, they help us weed out Cupid’s inappropriate romantic mates. At best, our girlfriends look out for us. “He’s not for you because: he’s (she’s) unavailable; he’s abusive; he’s in a relationship; he’s not sharing your core values; he doesn’t deserve you; he’s broke ass; etc., etc., etc.

Most importantly, Caron knows I have been striving to learn new tools to take care of myself as I recreate a life after the death of my amazing partner and husband. She is helping me to discover, even rediscover, who I am in the face of impossible to reconcile loss.

I believe she sent the crown as a reminder to help me keep me moving in a positive direction with my life’s dreams … And she won’t deny it when I say: She’s my boyfriend until I get one!