Once upon a time Marvin and Helen, Wendell and Neva and John and Lennise chose to move into Valley High Manor…a housing area near east city limits of Des Moines.  This is where the 3 couples chose to raise their families which included Nina Sue, Susan Jean and Lennie Rae.  As life happened, those who know these girls as women do not use their middle names but these girls as women still refer to each other lovingly with the middle names included.  I snickered to myself tonight when I heard Susan call Lennie….Lennie Rae.  It felt comfortable, it felt right and it felt loving.

It’s a girls weekend in Des Moines for the three of us….we grew up together, played together, road bikes together, fought with each other and now that we are “old ladies” it doesn’t feel like we have been apart for years and years…just didn’t go to the same parties over the last few years.  But we still have the connections of our childhoods, know each other’s family secrets, and connect on memories that happened over 50 years ago.

Vaping outside Susie’s house tonight before bed, I looked down the hill at my old house in the neighborhood and Lennies house the next one down and felt a peacefulness wondering what happening in the universe that brought these couples to the same neighborhood, on the same street at roughly the same time.  I’m so thankful for “us”

Btw…a life size James Dean in Lennie’s basement scared the crap out of me as I walked around the corner….and as young teenagers do, we did this!

Until next time….