Tea

It's Sunday, and it's time for more socializing. Hard to believe that I can go for days some weeks barely interacting with anyone.  Today is the birthday celebration of my friend Carol. For years, four of us---Nancy, Sandy, Carol and I have had tea at the Huntington Library and Gardens Tea Room to revel in the joys of getting older and wiser.  Nancy is an attorney, Sandy is an artist and Carol is an actress with a 9-5 day job at Children's Hospital. Sometimes we are months late by the time our schedules show white space on the same square, but we just keep emailing and calling back and forth until we have a match.  

When my husband told me our marriage was over that Sunday afternoon in July last year, I emailed my friends.   I asked that no one call because I knew there'd only be crying on my end of the phone.  A few hours later though, the three of them had arranged an emergency tea for Tuesday morning.  

That November, in preparation for moving out of my house, I threw a "packing party." Carol had done a marathon that day to raise money for stroke prevention and couldn't make it, but she called me late that night to ask how the party had gone. "My walls are empty," I sobbed. I sat in my denuded living room crying while I pressed the phone my ear.  Her soft husky voice (that I've loved from the moment that I first heard it 33 years ago) was balm for my broken spirit.  Carol also has a great sense of intuition.  If I had taken her up on her offer to walk me to my car one night when I was 20-something, I wouldn't have spent an hour flattened on the front seat of my car with some jerk's hands around my neck.