March 2021

It’s true. Stress creates a “fight or flight” response in humans. However, say some experts in such matters (and who am I to argue with Experts in Such Matters), the female of our species (usually smart enough to avoid a fight with larger, stronger males, and reluctant to flee, given that she is likely pregnant, nursing, or protecting her young), has developed yet another strategy to escape stress: social ties. 

That’s right. So well observed is this female scheme that it has a name: Tend and Befriend—a pattern best seen in teen girls, and post-menopausal women. 

And there I was, post-menopausal, scrambling down a washed out sand dune, aided by a bush-secured rope, dropping several feet to the wide, smooth shore of Gray’s Harbor because my soul requires it. Meanwhile, four other females of my species relaxed inside a spacious beach house securing social ties, tending and befriending, and minding not at all that I was missing. As I rappelled the cliff, I remembered T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock saying, “There will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet,” and I knew there would be time for me to join those four to tend and befriend, which we did by adding some fun. 

During two full days, and parts of two others, with women I knew only somewhat, I watched the way it works:

An initial yielding by everyone any claim on the best bedrooms. It proved nearly impossible to finally settle.

A brainless game designed to quaff quarters while confusing the meaning of left and right.

A game featuring a pig that farts, leaving sensible, bright, accomplished, admirable women beset by laughter to the point of pee, and flailing arms as if hand-threshing a field of ripe wheat before a threatening thunderstorm. I mean, this seems to be what it takes to tend and befriend. 

No wonder it was necessary to turn to the tastes and tipsy of Scotch and Whiskey. 

Food. Lots of it, turned to frequently.

Quietness by those awake while others slept.

A movie without captions but with “Said what?” frequently interjected, and  politely tended to.  No “Shhh-ing.”

Walks, whether long or short. Walks created time for conversation. I wrote in Life with a Capital ‘L,’ that if we linger, stay attentive to another long enough (e.g., on a shared walk), we discover the joy, or the relief, of “Oh, you too?” We listen. We befriend. We tend.

“There’s a boardwalk to the beach,” said one. Wow!  Access the beach without a rope. And how about the shared sight of deer ambling over thickets of Ammophila, the long, straw-colored beachgrass bent flat, laying nearly as deep as a haystack across dunes wisely closed to human trespass? Or the taking of turns taking pictures of the five—how can something so simple be made so confusing? It wasn’t easy, but by tending and befriending, we managed to do it.

Sand dollars, pebbles, rocks, dogs running, women chatting, collecting sandy stuff, sniffing the smell of saltwater, watching boats on the horizon, and quiet conversation. All this, created a concert of comfort common to women befriending. Stop. Linger. Look. Listen. Cameras clicking.

But there, “Ugh,” I said as we walked, a staggered line of five, on a paved road back to our shelter. Who thought it tasteful to put purple doors on a beach house garage? I mean, not purple, here, at the edge of earth where nature lays out flat charcoal sand, a scorched blue sky, and the burnt-butter color of bushes and beachgrass, where even the strong wind seems to blow grey. Not purple. Please.

“But, purple is my favorite color . . .” said one.

And right there, I realized — here, on Washington state’s southwestern most peninsula, at Point Chehalis, in the mouth of Gray’s Harbor, strong social ties allow for differences of opinion by women willing to help a friend up from the beach on a rope (you know, had they noticed); who help locate a nightlight; walk a dog not your own, prepare a meal, lend a hand, share a bathroom, search for lost gloves, and lessen stress by tending, befriending, and laughing a lot.

No wonder I love being female.