The Silver Linings

On Wednesday, we met for lunch and a tour of the Kousa Creek Southern Living Idea House. It was a glorious fall day. We heard about the Golf Digest LPGA house with its 9,000 fabulous square feet and toured it, too. We posed for pictures on the stairs at Kousa Creek and in the 'locker room' near the indoor putting green in the other. We lunched and laughed and looked. Joyce looked at the view, Jane looked at the kitchen, Mary looked at storage, Janice looked at bathtubs, Emily looked at toilets, Eddie looked at the cabinets and I looked at art. Each of us found things to love . . . and reasons to not move in tomorrow.

"We" are a group of women who crossed a stage together almost 50 years ago to receive our high school diplomas and now are looking forward to the BIG Reunion.

So several times a year, we have a Girls' Day Out to plan ahead, to look back, to make new friends of old acquaintances or perhaps to make new acquaintances of old friends. . . . Sometimes there are twenty or so; this time there were only seven of us. Oddly, all seven have a connection to the same Junior High and four have a connection to the same church. Each of us was born in 1941 and, with my November birthday, I was teased for being the youngest. It didn't even seem strange, that at our age, we would mark the difference of months just like we did in our teens and, by the end of the week, I was no longer the only one at 65.

As the sun slanted through the tall Georgia pines and brilliant oaks, we began to feel the pull back home and the responsibilities waiting at the end of our 100 mile drive. None of us had ever been "best friends" and our lives had taken us in the usual different directions, but on this day, in the midst of exploring, we were surprised to make a few new connections. We were reluctant to end the day.

It seems that, like the gray clouds which began to cover the sun as the day ended, getting older sometimes comes with silver linings.


AAB