Good friends

Last night went to a barbeque at the home of two of my friends. The men cooked, and the best part -- the men cleaned up after dinner was over. This is of some significance for women and men of a certain age -- our experience was that women did all the cooking, cleaning and the men sat around shooting the shit about whatever manly men talked about. My friend's 21 year old nephew is visiting them for the weekend; he's just as nice a young man as you can imagine. He's great looking, too. He did most of the cleanup duties. We all offered to help, in fact, all the women thought we'd be sharing the duties -- if the men cooked, then we'd clean up. But this wasn't the case at all. We were waited on, and it was really quite sweet.

Four of us are not in relationships (I include the nephew and one of the men); one woman is in a long-distance relationship; and the couple whose house we were at have been together for quite some time. For me, divorced nearly 15 years and quite adept at getting involved with the wrong man, it was great to see a functional couple at work.

We talked, we told stories, we told jokes. We laughed. It was such a pleasant evening that bears mentioning because sometimes I think that conversation is a dying art form. We teased the nephew a lot, because he's great looking, and we're a bunch of dirty old women -- that was fun.

Laughter among friends has great restorative power. It makes me feel safe. I mean laughter at a deep level, belly laughs, laughs that take my breath away. It makes me feel connected.

We started talking about creating a food co-op for us -- I remembered the one I belonged to 30 years ago when my kids were babies. There were about 30 families in it and we took turns shopping for everyone once a week. Did that for about a year or two. We talked about creating our own "retirement" community although I know I will never be able to retire -- and we talked a lot about Viet Nam -- one of the men was a Nam Vet who gets compensation from the government because, as he puts it, it's the government's way of saying they were wrong to send these soldiers. That Viet Nam was wrong.

And that was our evening. How is your holiday weekend shaping up?