Finding friends in low places
Recommended reading for finding a new family
I didn’t end the year the way I’d have liked to. Which seems to be a fitting way to end a year, or an era, that I didn’t quite live the way I’d have liked to. My holiday season started with a tailspin that left two friendships in critical condition and ended with a beach walk and a melancholic midnight toast and a hurried taxi ride home.
Normally, I like to start the year with a deep clean. A fresh slate for the new year. I usually cling to the optimism that comes with sweeping away cobwebs to make room for bright and beautiful things to fill the unoccupied space. I usually sit at my desk with my diaries and vision boards, charting out the course for the new year so that I may start the year with direction and drive.
This year, I didn’t have the desk to do the work, even if I had wanted to or had the privacy to do so. Instead, this weekend, I stomped through the heather on the side of a mountain, trudging my own trail back to the bottom, and it feels a little like that. I’m bushwacking through life now. Here I am, a week into 2025, setting loose intentions like I’m going off-piste. I’m choosing my line.
One of the first things on the to-do list here in Dublin is establish some sort of real community. Finding my people. Ideally, finding a job while I’m at it. And in tried and true Trish fashion, that means joining some book clubs. Coincidentally, one of the first books assigned for my new book club is centred on finding a new family, albeit unwillingly.
The best thing I’ve heard lately
“Can we get two half pints of Guinness, please?” said the South African woman, leaning over me at the bar in Grogan’s. Her daughter stood swiping on her phone, as though she’d really rather not be in a Dublin pub while her friends were soaking up the sunshine back home.
“Two and a half pints, coming right up,” replied the barman, before rushing down the other end of the bar.
Turned out, he wasn’t joking, and the South Africans, dismayed, gave me one of their full pints before heading outside to pickle their livers on Drury Street.
Cheers to fortuitous misunderstandings!
At once propulsive and heartfelt, The Wedding People is a near perfect book club pick. In the wake of her husband’s affair, the subsequent divorce, the pandemic, and the death of her darling cat, Phoebe is feeling lost. Without nothing left to tether her to her old life, she books an obscenely expensive trip to the hotel of her dreams in Rhode Island. With nothing but an exquisite green silk dress and a plan to eat her weight in oysters then kill herself, she’s feeling at ease for the first time in a long time. Until she gets to the hotel and realizes she’s the only person not there for Lila and Gary’s wedding.
When the bride catches on to her and her plan, a weird and wonderful friendship begins as Phoebe becomes one of the wedding people and is immediately entangled in their lives. From their family dramas and sagas (I dare you not to fall a little bit in love with the out-of-touch yet somewhat misunderstood mother, Patricia) to the bizarre bachelorette traditions (the panda sex expert is a very nice touch), Espach does a brilliant job of pushing the plot forward while using Phoebe’s inner world to cut right through to the quick.
It is a fun and fraught reminder that no amount of force can make a family happen. But sometimes, you’ll just land in a group of people and one of them will be like, ‘don’t you dare ruin my wedding by committing suicide’ and voila, you have a new community. Sometimes, it is just that easy!
I think I highlighted half the book, and I can’t wait to dissect it with my new book club. If you’ve read it, please let me know so I can gush about it with you.
What are you manifesting this year? Are you craving community like me? Bagging peaks? Or are we all just bushwacking through life, swinging a machete unnecessarily at the knee-length heather on the hillside? Either way, you have my love along the way, and we’ll be back to the regular schedule now that the holidays are over and I’m experiencing a fresh wave of new year’s inspired motivation.