yesterday

Where to start? The day was full of friends, some local, some not.

I got an email from Sharon, who used to live nearby until her husband died, and she moved back to her family in Tidewater. She and her sister are planning to visit this weekend. We’ll have a great time, catching up and eating!

Tami is getting married. I’ve known her for about ten years, and we each went through the dissolution of our marriages during that time. Mine was a bit less volatile, in part because I didn’t have the involvement of children. We also worked together at her garden center business and share a love of gardening. The garden center was the glue for our friendship, as it was housed in an old cottage, up the creek from the house I live in now. During the two or three years I worked with her there, we hosted some wonderful “girl” parties, complete with bonfires, potlucks, and twinkle lights on the trees. She sold the business and left the area to go back to school to become a veterinarian tech. Having completed that course, she moved back, divorced, and got a job at Virginia Tech. I’d see her maybe once a year at festivals, where we’d catch up. I got an invitation to a Fourth of July party at her new home in Blacksburg, where I met her fiancé. Then I got an invitation to her wedding, which will be next month at the cottage. She’s rented it, again, and she and her fiancé are fixing it up to be their weekend hideaway. I stopped there yesterday to see how they’re doing. The magic is still there, in the cottage and in her.

Rita just got back from a long-weekend trip with her husband. They rarely go out of town, as they farm, which pretty much ties them to their acreage. She works in town, so I stopped and had lunch with her and her co-workers, always a cheerful, noisy time. She’s my “solid as a rock” friend, brave and funny.

I had been getting emails from Anna, saying she was thinking of me and thought she would call, so we could catch up. She stayed here for a month last autumn, while we worked on a film. The screening for the film was a couple of weeks ago, and she wanted to get my take on it, as she couldn’t make the trip from her home in California. I called her, when I got home from work, and we had a wonderful talk, every bit as thoughtful as the talks we’d had, sitting on the back porch after filming was done for the day.

Friendships take commitment on both sides. I’m honored that these special women have chosen to make the effort with me.