A recent lunch at Toby’s restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin, with my old chum, Susan, took about two hours. We aren’t slow eaters. It just takes a long time to consume bowls of potato soup topped off with dessert and coffee plus a large side dish of conversation. It’s a treat to chat with a contemporary who understands how we got where we are.
During my forty-five-minute drive to our confab, I thought about meeting Susan when we were teenagers. She attended Bethlehem Church in Brodhead and I belonged to Trinity in Durand, two Lutheran churches located about fifteen miles apart. The congregations shared a new pastor who formed a joint Luther League, a youth organization that met once a month on Sunday nights.
When we were young mothers lunching together, Susan was accompanied by her two, small sons and I brought my pair of toddler daughters. We each added a third child to our families–hers a girl and mine, a boy. Our adult kids are scattered and we’re grandmothers.
There have been breaks in our contact. Susan has lived in several states, divorced and returned to this area. She served as editor for various publications, retired but is looking at possibilities to resume writing.
My husband and I remained in our hometown. I’ve freelanced newspaper and magazine articles, joined professional writers’ groups in nearby cities and attended national conferences and workshops. Wednesdays, I post to my blog aimed at older women. My coming of age memoir, “The View from a Midwest Ferris Wheel,” will be issued in December by Adelaide Books, a New York independent publisher.
Our encounter wasn’t “remember when” time. A few memories crept into our discussion, but mostly we talked about what’s happening and what we expect in the future.
Do you engage in girltalk with a friend?
Yes, I am quite an outgoing person so I engage in a lot of girl talk, but now it is on the phone as I stay home as much as possible because of the pandemic. I have always enjoyed talking on the phone, but now it really is a necessity even though I have a husband at home with me.
I don’t spend much time talking about the past, but more about contemporary things. You and I talk about writing — maybe what you have written, what Janice has written or what I have written. We talk about books we are enjoying or have enjoyed recently. We may talk some about what our husbands are doing or in the past, how Sid and my euchre games were going. Probably anything can be fun to talk about except politics!!
I enjoy our phone chats & emails.
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Glad to have you. /thank you.
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Glad to have you. thank you.