This week I visited with some old friends – and I do mean “old”. On Tuesday, I had lunch with three couples and another widow, the surviving members of our long standing “Sorority Group.” As you might have surmised, we five women were in college together and were members of the same sorority. We attended what was then Colorado State College in Greeley. Upon graduation we had become teachers in high school business, high school home economics, junior high math & social studies, elementary special education, and elementary school/library media. After graduating we went our own ways, but after about five years, we all ended up teaching in the Denver area. We would sometimes meet for lunch and once as we were chatting, one of the gals suggested we include our husbands in the next get-together.
I was a newlywed and we didn’t have much furniture yet, but I offered to host the first dinner. I made lasagna and we ate it on a tin camp table sitting on folding chairs. We women had worried that our husbands were too different (automobile mechanic, gourmet grocer, house painter, school principal, and government executive) to get along. Our fears were unfounded. The guys hit it off right away and made plans to play poker after dinner at our next gathering. We established an every other month schedule, so each couple hosted the dinner once a year (skipping July) and, thus, we continued for close to thirty years.
Once we all retired, our traveling schedules have interfered with meeting quite so frequently. I moved to Loveland in 1996 and my husband died in 1997. We continued our dinner routine for a few more years until another husband died and that widow moved with her daughter to Bennett. Now we meet for lunch in restaurants whenever we can find dates that will work for all of us. During the past fifty years, our lives have been separate, but intertwined. We have watched our children grow up and have attended their weddings. We share pictures of our grandkids. We support each other in times of joy and sorrow. Long-time friendships are among life’s greatest blessings.
