Here's to Girlfriends!

 September 18, 2024
Ladies Who Lunch

I met with my friends today for lunch. We get together once a month and call ourselves the Inner Circle. We've known each other for over 20 years, some of us for over 30. Everyone in the group is or was a business owner and that's how we got together in the first place. Now we are meeting to catch up. This month we celebrated two birthdays, one of them mine. I'll be 80 in a couple of weeks.

For some reason, today was a bit different. We talked about things like our favorite TV shows. Shared names of reliable cleaning services. That's not the kind of thing we usually talk about.

While we were waiting for the last one to show up, another woman some of us knew walked into the restaurant. She sat down for a few minutes to chat. She said she was working with the governor on a small business advisory group and my name had come up. Twenty or thirty years ago, I wouldn't have been surprised. My name would always come up in a conversation like that. It's nice to be remembered. I don't have that knowledge or those contacts anymore, but that once was my life.

I tell too many stories. It's kind of a running joke among my friends that no matter the topic of conversation, I've got a story to tell that relates. I hope they are laughing with me and not at me, but I'm trying to rein myself in when it comes to story-telling. I'm afraid of becoming a rambling old woman. It's hard.

One of the friends is caring for her husband who has pancreatic cancer. We all know, and we know that she knows, that he won't get better. She can't always make it to lunch, just takes it one day at a time, so it was nice to see her there today. Later she posted on Threads how wonderful it was to get together with friends. She said it was like getting out in the sunshine.

I love my husband. He is my life. But sometimes you just need a Girlfriend.