Babe Three Oh

Shelley and I started calling each other Babe many years ago, within the first year of our friendship.
"Hey Babe"
"Hey babe."
"Oh Babe, did I tell you...?"
"No way Babe!"
and so on. It still goes that way with us. Cards are signed "Babe, Happy Birthday, love, Babe." I just spent the weekend with her, returning from the Galveston Bay area with these pictures and thoughts. The following text and pictures are related only in that they both came home with me.

Hardly anything has been more important to me than the deep connections I have with friends. When I was in high school I established some very meaningful relationships that continue today. My mother recently remarked that in high school she told me this particular friendship with Shelley would not last, that it would all fade and fizzle out. Well, we have been friends for only 30 years. The really neat thing about Shelley is that our friendship has really evolved, grown and matured. We are not stuck in high school or college. We are right here right now in our friendship.

There is a group of 8 of us that email. There are only a handful of days in the last 8 or so years that have gone without an email from someone in that group. The more life happens to each of us, the closer were are drawn. If everything goes in our lives like it is supposed to, everyone will bury their parents. Of 8 of us, half have done just that. Two of us have lost both. Three of us have lost a brother, one has lost two. One of us has buried a child. That's what happens when thing go badly wrong.

We all have children. A couple have little ones, one waited, one kept having them. There is also a grandmother or two, or GILF which is by far preferable... Divorces, yes, past and current. Two are going through divorces now.

So when we get together there are tears. But mostly we laugh, eat, drink and pee frequently. We are all in your face friends that tell it like it is. This doesn't always go so well and yet we know how vital that kind of love is.

Weight goes up and down, kids start to drive, kids have good grades, kids have bad grades, husbands make us mad, husbands cheat, husbands buy massage tapes and love us like teenagers. Parents were alcoholics, parents were heroes. Therapists, prayers and margaritas, important for various needs at particular times...

The dynamic of just the two of us together this last weekend was that we didn't miss a word of what the other said. And there were a lot of words. A number of words roughly 4 times the average number a woman uses in a day. Maybe more. And, honey, many more to come...

Babe, thanks for a great weekend, love, Babe...