Steel Magnolias

On my last night in the north country, I enjoyed without a doubt the most fun gathering in many many years. It was the women of the spiritual group with whom I had shared my life, faithfully and for hours every Friday at Central United Methodist Church.

Besides celebrating our newly awakened hearts (to the Holy Spirit as the result of a weekend retreat that we all had attended), we also chewed on worldly grisle. We were menopausal, mothering teenagers, and were in variously challenged marriages. Lots of knots in our knickers.

I left six years ago, and had not seen them since then. The teenagers have all grown and several of us are grandmothers. The kids survived, we survived, and we have all continued on strong and committed spiritual walks. We all looked younger, were more relaxed, free for the moment of the weights we had been carrying.

We talked and laughed for over six hours. I mean REALLY laughed. Sideaching, pants wetting, can't-catch-your-breath laughing. We would go back and forth from deep faith talk to ludicrous, rude bodily humor talk. It totally amazed me that the intimacy we had developed was still there, magnified many times, even though we have not been in touch in the meantime.

This is the reward my sister enjoys for staying in the same town for thirty years. These kinds of friendships are very hard to establish in later life when we don't have our children to bring us together, and our energy is running thin. And I am sure as hell not laughing like this in the zendo. I am now challenged to go out and try to find another group of women with whom to relate on this level. I have left this part of my life untended. I need to write more about this.