There once were two women, through whatever twist of adversity, found themselves sitting hip to hip on someone’s deck stairs with a glass of wine in their hands. You might think that no good can come of this but to the contrary, thirty odd years later, only good came of it.
We are the best of friends. I know this because we can talk for hours after not seeing each other for months or we can sit in silence for hours without any discomfort. We garden. We read. We have progressed from Rhine wine in the box to Kendall Jackson Chardonnay and Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio. It took me longer to get there and she christened me the Peter Pan of wine lovers. We have been through divorces, hers first then mine, ectopic pregnancies, the deaths of our fathers, an overbearing father in law, dogs, her children’s heartbreaks and triumphs , pounds gained and lost. Aspirations and do-overs.
She is the smartest woman I know. She is a Michelle Pfeiffer to my Bette Midler. She is mostly confident and sometimes terrified, she has a “business” voice, that I have learned to use on occasion, that will stop you as if your own mother were speaking. She is the consummate mother to her, now grown, children and fully expects to be the cool Gramma one day.
She has helped me through the very toughest time in my life with the simple words; don’t worry Honey I got this. I was sitting alone in my home and she was four hundred miles away but with those words I knew I would live. Later she came and scooped me up and took me to the Cape. It was a long weekend of doing whatever I needed. If I needed to eat, we ate. If I needed to cry, we cried. If I needed to walk, we walked. We ate good food, drank wine, and we continued to return to the Cape each year for fifteen years. Each year a different problem for one or the other of us to vent. Each year a new adventure or not. Each year a renewal of our friendship as Summer Sisters as she so appropriately named us.
Among the things that I am most grateful for in my ever changing life; my Summer Sister without whom I would never have found my confidence again, would never have believed that I would come out of all the chaos, would never have ventured to the Cape and grown to love it the way I do.
Happy Birthday Kyle