Foursome Friendship Turns Fifty

 

When we first met, the four of us (Mary Locke, Beverly, Sylvia and I) were all in our mid- to late-Twenties.  Three of us were married with children; one of us (Sylvia) still glamorously single.  We escorted each other into our Thirties, celebrating birthdays, marriages, travels, and....what Mary Locke calls "Life's Rich Pageant." 

I attended Sylvia's wedding party right across the street from where I now live--long before I had any way of knowing I'd ever live on Ogden Lane--and she lived upstairs in an apartment of what is now Jan's house next door! 

Throughout the decades, we have traveled to our various homelands and met each other's families.  We've been to lake houses, beach houses, Colorado, Cape Cod, and any place we considered a good setting for a retreat. Some of us have been to the weddings of some of our children.  After my divorce, we four went to the beach for a divorce retreat!  (Whoever heard of a divorce retreat? I think Beverly made it up....)

Beverly hosted my unforgettable fiftieth birthday at Port Aransas--where she and Larry were living at the time.  Some of us fondly remember a bit of midnight skinny dipping and some afternoon scarf dancing. 

Twenty five years and many retreats later, here we are on the beach at Port Aransas, staying at Mary Locke's beach house, eating a birthday cake Larry made for me, and waving scarves at sunset.

Years ago, Beverly and I wrote a book we called The Fabric of Friendship.  We included writings by all four of us--a sort of foursome memoir. While we never published it,  the assembling of it was a celebration of a friendship of four women.  One of Beverly's daughters, Whitney, on seeing one of Beverly's scrapbooks filled with pictures we'd taken of ourselves together, said, "Y'all sure must love yourselves!" 

We did.  We still do.

Three decades later, it seems fitting that three of the four of us are waving shimmery fabrics on the beach and letting the wind do what it wills. 

We didn't grow up together, but we all grew up in identical Baptist traditions.  While none of us are in the Baptist church anymore, we all still know all the words to all the same hymns.  We all know the same stories we were steeped in as girls.  Mary Locke--who like me is a kind of spiritual mutt--still wants "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" played at her funeral. 

Now here we are, one already 80, the other three at the octogenarian door.  My gratitude for a friendship of such length and depth is immeasurable!  

Mary Locke and Beverly walking on the beach

Beverly

Mary Locke and me

Mary Locke dancing without music

(Sylvia's not in these pictures.  She was unable to join us because she and Peter had a trip planned--which didn't actually happen because Peter got Covid.  The three of them had a September retreat while I was in Virginia.)