Last month, Ken and I celebrated our 65th wedding anniversary. I am fortunate to still be in contact with several women who have been my cronies since before Kenny became my boyfriend in high school. At that time, we girls all lived on family, dairy farms so we had a lot in common. As teenagers do, we exchanged confidences about the guys we were dating.
When my contemporaries and I were graduating seniors, we had no clue about where our adult lives might take us. I have stayed in the Durand community, become the matriarch of a police family and a journalist. Some of my chums moved away for marriage or employment but then returned and we reunited.
Through the years, we didn’t always take time to stay in contact with everyone we knew. It may be necessary to fill in the gaps in our relationships that occurred while we were each busy with our own families and activities.
All of us have coped with marriages, births, divorces, serious illnesses and deaths. We have changed but there remains that inner something that brought us together in the first place. It’s a treat to chat with someone my age who is looking forward as we as “remembering when…”
We may surreptitiously make comparisons about how each of us is handling old age. As octogenarians, we have said final good-byes to many of our cohorts. My twenty-three DHS classmates no longer gather for an annual reunion because so many have died or are in poor health and no longer able to attend.
I had never thought my friendships unusual until I was talking with a woman who had grown up in a family that moved around the country a lot. She had no longtime comrades.
Do you still have any friends that you grew up with?
I consider myself a lucky woman for I have friends from many levels of my life including High School friends. Of course, you fall into the category of my longest running (I won’t say oldest) friends. Phyllis Steindl is another one. Janice Quass, from that era has passed away now, & I sure do miss her. My sister, Janice is not only a sister, but a wonderful friend. I have your cousin, Pat Meissen (who is my friend again after an estrangement) from work as well as Nancy Coppoletti. I have Joyce Holter & Margi Jones that I found in my writing group, and I have recently made some new friends in my church Mary, Ann, Deborah & Ursula. It is so much fun to have friends.