While You Were Out...

While I was in Berwyn, Ill., drinking Leinenkugel, cooing over my new niece, and playing board games with my sister and brother-in-law, my close friend from college dropped out of AA and started drinking again. And my best friend in New York wrecked two cars.
Of course both of them swear they're okay, and blame extenuating circumstances--or, in S.'s case, a mystery grey-haired woman who ran a light then took off after she plowed into S.'s SUV and some guy who was driving way too fast in a blizzard and rear-ended her rental car three days later (he actually stuck around and was rewarded with a citation for 'reckless endangerment').
I'm inclined to believe both my friends. For one thing, S. would tell me if she was at fault--just as she did when she hit a car one week into her new job as a pharmaceutical sales rep and called me in hysterics because she feared she was about to lose her new car and her new job. (Note: In fact, not only did she not lose her job or car, but she got a date--and later a marriage proposal--from the cop who showed up to write the accident report).
And I know that my college friend--we'll call her A.--will be okay. Because, somehow, she is always okay. And her life has been a series of extenuating circumstances, so I feel more pity than anger at her occasional lapses in judgment (and now, sobriety). I am angry only because she made her drinking my problem and another friend of mine's problem too (who extended a visit to accompany her to an alcohol treatment center). She convinced us that she was an alcoholic--and I blamed myself for not picking up on the signs 10 years earlier when we were roommates after college. I sent her cards praising her for acknowledging and dealing with the drinking and underlying issues that had plagued her for years; and I spent hours on the phone with her, encouraging and supporting her. And she convinced me--well, all of us--that she was committed to staying sober and getting back into shape. She was even going to enter a bodybuilding competition. A couple weeks ago, she joked about 'upgrading' to an AA group across the bay, and finding herself a wealthy--and sober--lawyer or dot-com multi-millionaire. Then she sends me an email message last week extolling the 'crazy' time she had when her high school friend came to visit, and how a wealthy rancher plied her with drinks on their second date.
Meanwhile, my best friend in New York was lying in a hospital bed with monitors wired to her belly to make sure the 5-month old fetus ("jelly bean," she calls her) had survived the second car crash. And S. hadn't called me in Chicago because she didn't want to "worry" me, she wanted me to enjoy my time with my niece. Her SUV is still in the shop. Enterprise has informed her that it must complete an investigation of the second accident before it will issue her another rental. And she got an email this morning warning her and her colleagues that her company may have to lay off some of the sales staff. But the doctors said she survived the crashes intact--if a little shaken (and wary of getting behind the wheel again this winter). And her husband and her little bean are okay. And so I know she will be okay too.