Call My Girlfriends

I'm just plain lonely on the day after my son leaves my house and goes to his dad's place, so this morning I wrote up a list of girlfriends of mine to call, visit, email, hang with. I just got back from tea and Scrabble with my 95-year-old friend Ruth from church who of course, beat me soundly at Scrabble. We had a wonderful time. She goes to church with me, but isn't a big God-talker, she's rather cool and edgy for a 95 year old. She was showing off her new pink Polartec jacket from Old Navy to me and serving up blueberry muffins and good English tea.

As we started to play Scrabble she says, "You know Halley, it's like God sent you straight to me this morning, I was feeling so lonely." I told her it was vice versa, that I was warding off loneliness too and missed her a lot. I figure I'm taking lessons on how to be 100 from her. She is a great teacher. She reaches out to people. She keeps busy. She cleans her house every day. She writes letters. She has her hair done once a week. I think she's great.

I think really old people scare us and we're not quite sure how to deal with them. They don't scare me. Only thing is she is really frail and I like to give her a hug but worry I'll crush her. She's like a little bird, a petite thing, probably as petite at 95 as she was at 25, but I have to be careful with her. She had the cutest after-dinner mint green cashmere sweater on and pearls. She is hot.