The lunch girls

Dear Brynne,


Today you had your first three hour lunch with the girls.  Its a tradition between your mom and I that started more years ago than I can count these days.  The first time your mother and I had lunch together we were probably still in high school and we grabbed fries and a diet coke at Hardees or Mcky D's.  Then suddenly we were in college and started a long standing tradition of grabbing pizza at Godfathers.  For awhile I remember many late nights spent dancing at The Old Broadway, which turned into many early morning breakfasts at Cher's Kitchen.  


Over the years your mom moved away, and then later I did too.  But we both returned home to visit family and always got together for our lunch date over the holidays.  We'd both go back to our towns and resume our lives, collecting and gathering our stories to share with each other the next time we'd meet.


There have been many phone calls, emails and visits in between, but your mom and I have had an innate ability to pick up right where we left off each time we get together.  Its grown much more complicated, this gathering of ours.  Its not just her schedule and mine to juggle any more, but its husbands, and kids and now parents we work around each time you and your family come for a visit.  


Plus our topics have matured along with ourselves.  While we might have focused once on boys and dating and shopping, we now talk about boys, as in our sons, and dating, which we agree we won't let you do till you are at least 30, and shopping... well some things never change.  


But somehow we've managed to remain friends all these years.  As you sat watching us over lunch today, I couldn't help think of all the things we have yet to teach you.  But here's the main thing I want to tell you.  The things worth keeping in life, are the ones we make time for.  


Like your mother and I, and our lunches.  Those lunches have seen us through, engagements and break-ups, weddings and mortgages, funerals and births.   I have no doubt the seeds of hope for a baby girl for your mom, were once whispered over one of our lengthy lunch conversations years ago. 


Oh sure, on the surface, its just lunch I suppose.  But string together all of those hours spent sharing the stories of our lives, and what you have, is the thing worth keeping.  A best friend and a friendship borne over diet coke and french fries, still dreaming about the future and all they will have to share, the next time they have lunch. 


Thanks for lunch girls!!!