/-'

'

A key to harmonious living is to
know when you're in a bad mood.
One day, Benkoff came home tired
and not in a sociable mood. Her
roommate had a friend over, so "I said
my hellos, then hid in my room.
"You have to know you're in a
small space, cannot take out every
nasty mood on someone else. You
don't want to be fighting or angry
with someone you're living with. This
is not your mate or your sister or
brother who has to love you no mat-
ter what."

Kosher Squabbles
When Tanya Mazor-Posner, 28,
moved to Michigan, she answered an
ad in The Jewish News for a roommate.
• Although she found someone who was
keeping -kosher, her roommate later
\_ changed her mind.
/—
"We shared our dishes together, and
I trusted her. But later on, she decided
she did not want to be observant, and
all of our dishes basically became
• treift. I lost about 15 pounds because I
I couldn't eat anything in my own
apartment."
"It was really uncomfortable for me,
very difficult," she recalls. "We got
into major arguments about it."
"It wasn't only kosher that was a
•
problem. At the end she was not even
observant, so it was very hard for me
to have people over for Shabbat. Or if
I wanted to stay home in my apart-
ment for Shabbat, [it was] impossible,
no choice but to leave."

Finding the same
standards.

The roommate eventually did
another 180-degree turn. She is now
extremely observant, married to
somebody who is studying in yeshiva,"
Mazor-Posner says.
/—
Her advice? If you're observant, "I
wouldn't recommend living with
somebody who's not ... even close to
[your] standards because it's not going
to work out.
"In retrospect, I probably would
have boarded with a family in Oak
Park ... But as far as finding a room-
mate, I don't find too many observant
people nowadays."
Or she would recommend living
alone. "You can find apartments in
Oak Park or Southfield that are very
reasonable."

"

She Says

The secret to lasting female friendships, post-college.

JULIE WEINGARDEN

Special to the Jewish News

e sat side by side watch-
ing her daughter,
Alexandra, lie on the
fluorescent-lit, heated
bed, hooked up to various wires and
tubes, not knowing if this beautiful,
six-day-old baby with flushed skin was
going to make it.
I was the one person allowed in the
neonatal intensive care unit to sit
beside my friend, Rachel. Her hus-
band, Marc, thought I would have a
calming effect on her. If I was able to
comfort Rachel, even for a second, my
journey to Chicago from Atlanta
would have been worth it.
Today, Alexandra is a healthy, viva-
cious, blue-eyed wonder, but that
dreary December day is one Rach and
I will never forget. It was one of the
most emotionally draining and physi-
cally exhausting 24-hour periods of
Rachel's life, and I was there.
I hope I always can be.
Rachel and I met the first night of
freshman year at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. It was instant
chemistry. With a single round of
Jewish geography a friendship was
born. A life-long friendship.
We always laugh. We never fight.
And when I need to cry or bitch, she's
always there to listen. She's seen me at
my saddest, happiest, ugliest, prettiest,
weakest, most radiant and most vul-
nerable moments. Through hellish
blind dates, serious relationships and a
healthy share of "Mr. Rights-for-now."
Through the deaths of my grandfa-
thers, final exams, job hunting and
work stress, she's been a limitless sup-
port system.
We commiserated together senior
year with boxes of cereal and bags of
bagels, while we received job rejection
letters daily. Our only consolation was
that if we brought the rejections to the
local pub, we got free beer.
Years later, when I was going
through a hard time, she packed up
Alexandra's stroller, formula and car
seat and shlepped her daughter on a
plane to come take care of me.
When you reach a certain level of

Julie Weingarden is a free-lance writer

in West Bloomfield.

birthdays away).
When she got married and I was
dating endlessly, Rachel always said
that she lived vicariously through me.
Of course, I felt the same about her
stable, structured life. Even when we
are in completely different life stages,
we are always able to feel close. She
refuses to let a few hundred miles
come between us.
Every fall, as I see a new crop of
kids start school, I tend to get nostal-
gic for the daily environment that was
so conducive to making friends. While
it's easy to connect with your peers
when you are young
and carefree, not all
friendships endure the
test of time.
It's not always inten-
tional. Some friends
you may genuinely
adore, but you don't
make a strong effort to
keep in touch. Other
friends you simply out-
grow.
I have other close
friends from college,
but we tend to talk less
frequently than Rachel
and I. For some reason
they were more out-of-
sight, out-of-mind

friendship, modesty goes out the win-
dow. She's seen me deadly pale, con-
vulsing, with tears dripping down my
face after a major breakup. I've seen
her with machine-operated breast
pumps suctioned to her skin, after the
birth of her child.
We've had many good times —
from shopping at the shuk during a
semester in Israel, to sitting inside all
afternoon in New York and watching
When Harry Met Sally (who needs
Bloomingdale's, when you have good
friends?). She's the one I call during
90210 (yes, I still watch it) to dish

Julie and Rachel, above,
freshman year in college
(1987).

Alex, Rachel and Julie,
right, (1997).

about whether or not
Jennie Garth looks preg-
nant.
Despite marriage and
motherhood, she still finds time to
take care of friends. She's the one who
coordinates the birthday dinners for
our group of college buds. She
reminds the gang when a birthday or
anniversary is coming up, arranged for
a girls weekend to Wisconsin for
homecoming and is now busy plan-
ning our collective 30th birthday cele-
bration in London (and that's two

relationships. Although we were soror-
ity sisters, we apparently weren't fami-
ly enough to remain close once we
didn't live together. Where I once
knew their exam schedules and the
names of the guys they stared at in the
library, I now hear, through the
grapevine, when one of them gets
married or gives birth.
There is not enough time in life to

9/26
1997

Iwlt 411

I

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