BVG Night - February 2016

Our dear Sister j remarked to me recently, "I'm glad you're our historian. I would forget everything." So this one's for j: We had our monthly BVG Night last night, Wednesday, February 24, 2016, and it was at my house. It began at 4:45 PM. We dined on a new gluten free pasta and Italian sausage dish I found online. Frozen peas are cooked with pasta, and kale, onion and garlic are sautéed together, then added to the pasta and previously browned and drained Italian sausage. Accompanying this was a beautiful green salad compliments of j. For dessert, I prepared Baked Apple Slices, another recipe I found online, with cinnamon, raisins and walnuts. Four and a half hours after our gathering began, thoughts of getting up to an alarm to get to work the following morning prompted Cool and Elletu to signal the beginning of the end of our night of visiting. Clearly, we had not run out of things to say. Have we ever?

Have the topics of our conversations changed over the decades? You bet they have! It's been a really long time since we discussed things like diaper rash, head lice, temper tantrums and ear infections. Last night's dialogue included Elletu's story of babysitting her granddaughter and her granddaughter saying, "Grandma, your boob's hanging out!" When I heard that I thought about the recent story of j stripping. This one begs to be called "Elletu: An Accidental Stripper." Even though she denied it, it turned out to be true, it really was hanging out. (Thanks for keeping us abreast of the situation, Elletu.)

When the BVG's are together, we do let it all hang out, and what I mean by that is we can be ourselves. There are no pretenses. Lest you think it's all for laughs, it's not. In fact, last night we touched on some very serious issues facing us as the older women we are. We were a support group back when we were stay-at-home mothers of young children, and we are a support group now as we inch closer to 65 (Cool and Elletu) and 70 (j and I). Those ages are a few years off for each of us, but we are getting pretty close to identifying as 'senior citizens' (yikes!), and that makes our perspective on 'the future' quite different from what it was 34 years ago.

Thanks for keeping life fun, Sisters. Treasure each day of our friendship. How blessed we are!