Three Wishes

A couple of weeks ago an article in The New York Times was to my attention regarding a topic that seems to be pervasive these days: aging women, fertility and sperm donors. The article told the story of 3 women. Here's the synopsis: 3 friends approaching 40 find themselves single and yearning for children. One woman decides to go it alone and purchases a few vials of sperm. Before she uses the sperm, she ends up in a relationship and pregnant and passes the sperm to the next friend. The next friend contemplates then finds herself in a relationship and pregnant. So, she passes it to the third friend...are you starting to see a pattern? They all find themselves in relationships & pregnant with no use for the sperm. Interesting, right? Well, lo and behold, they wrote a book about their journey called Three Wishes. I picked it up and am about halfway through. The book expounds on the emotions and details of the story but the NYT article is certainly sufficient to get the gist of it. The biggest takeaway for me is the bond these women share. It got me thinking about the bonds I share with important women in my life. Some related, some not. So, when I told CityCrab the story, he was initially grossed out by it. I had to explain to him that it play out like some bad B movie. The 3 women didn't kick it with each other or the same man. And, they never used the sperm so it's not like they crossed swords or anything. But I really tried to understand what his thoughts were rooted in. The scenes played out like a bad movie. Every time we got in the car, I would bring it up. Then we'd be eating dinner and I'd bring it up or we'd be getting ready for bed, brushing our teeth and I'd bring it up. He just didn't get it. Then it dawned on me. Men don't get female friendships. They don't understand our bond. They don't understand talking to a stranger about something intimate at the nail salon. Or why we go to the bathroom together at restaurants. And they definitely don't get the dressing room at Loehmann's. This made it so much easier to understand. It also made me happy to have my female friendships.