Birthdays and Friends

A card from a birthday party last January. Short and sweet. Let's just get down to business. Eat dinner, open the gifts and move on to the celebration. Yee-haw!

I have been party-ing with these girls since 1988. They started before I began working at the Quest. They began hanging with one another in 1984 or so. I am the only one with a child. There are six of us at the core group, and we have a few spares in the mix. The spares are married with grown children. The others in the core group are very much involved with nieces and nephews. We were or are all very close to our Mothers. Two of us have had mothers pass away, two have had fathers pass away while we have all been friends. My father passed away in 1975, long before we gals met.

We get together once a month or so for birthdays, Halloween and Christmas. Since there are no birthdays in October and December. We miss a month once in a while in the summer, with each of us going our separate ways on vacation and such.

They share my trial and tribulation with my daughter and my niece. We have shared ups and downs with boyfriends and engagements; parents and illness. We used to travel to New York, Snowshoe, Toronto, Texas, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Florida. Now, we are lucky if we can get to a restaurant for dinner. Our lives have become very busy and complicated.

Not one of us have married, four of us have purchased houses on our own. Two have live-in guys, one gal is engaged to be married. No date set yet. One is taking care of her Mom and one is taking care of her dad. Three have been engaged to be married, I have been engaged twice. I wonder what happens that some plans just never materialize. With me, I don't think I was serious about either marriage. The first I was probably too young to know what I really wanted and the second one, I was doing all the work in the relationship and I was better off on my own. Maybe we are all controllers.

The nice thing is we care about one another. When we meet, we pick up where we left off a month or so ago. So, did your Mom go visit her brother in Texas? Your brother is getting married? Your niece is pregnant? It is nice. Cozy and comfortable. Good friends, good times.

Back to work tomorrow. I see our counselor for the first time in over a month. My daughter will be going. She went through a lot this month with her boyfriend. I want her to talk to a professional about it. The counselor can put it into so much better words than I. I am too close to the subject(s).