The Girls

 Zoom call at 5:00 last night, as I kept repeating to myself all day, lest I forget.

I also kept checking email, because our organizer, Christine, still hadn’t sent the link. By 4:00, what with packing to head back to Massachusetts and cleaning and doing laundry, I’d forgotten. So at 4:45 I was out in the garage sorting the car and gathering up the DampRid (moisture-gathering bags to hang in closets) I’d stored there.

By the I’d wandered inside it was 5:15 and I had a text reminding me to join the gang. I had of course just turned off my computer, so I revved that up, checked its camera to see if I could be seen, and clicked “join Zoom”.

It was another of the every-few-months-or-so gatherings of my girl friends from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Va. No particular agenda, just a chance to catch up. The players are pretty diverse.

We know me – Massachusetts resident, visitor to Florida, retired teacher, writer, grandma of 5.

Chris – Maryland retired college prof and historian, so Irish her mom had had a faint brogue, Catholic elementary school and then enthusiastic convert to Judaism after marriage, Bat Mitzvah and all.

Sheila – West Virginian resident in a small art-colony sort of town, stained glass artist who has had one of her works on the White House Christmas tree, three husbands in the rear view mirror, and now barely eking out a living and on Medicare.

Andrea – Hawaii, resident of Lahaina, whose home thankfully sat above the August 2023 wildfires, former tv producer, and who looks very tired, likely from caring for a husband who recently turned 101.

          The conversation ran through politics – we’re all unabashedly liberal; travel – some of us can, some of us now can’t; watching old musicals with granddaughters; health (inevitably); and oddly, no reminiscences about the past.

          There may be time for that yet, because by the close of the call we’d vowed to each other to meet in person. We made plans to get together next fall, in California to simplify travel for Andrea, with the subtext that Chris and I would do whatever it took to get Sheila there, too.

          Exciting!!