Sharon, for Lifetime

It is a dreary Monday in far west Texas. Can’t believe how much rain we have been getting yet the weather service reports that El Paso is still 2.5 inches below normal for the year. Crazy. My bff Sharon and I have been texting back and forth this morning as we do most mornings. Today we are discussing the incredible rain falling where she lives in Oklahoma and our crazy rain here and then our mutual search for the perfect pair of boots for fall.

To say Sharon and I go waaaaay back is an understatement. We have been friends for 46 years. For all but ten years of our lives. That is an achievement in this day and age where nothing is built to last, including significant relationships and even many marriages. We met in Bartlett, Tennessee the year my family moved there from Boston. Sharon and I were entering sixth grade. Mrs. Wilson was our teacher.

I was the shy new girl with the New England accent who wore lace anklet socks and less-than-trendy clothes. Some of the other girls in our class lived at the Baptist Children’s Home and were definitely more worldly than I was. Sharon was somewhere in between; a good girl who got along with everyone. (Can you find us? Second row, Sharon is in light blue with short hair and I am in a brown vest, shoulder length hair)

In seventh grade, Sharon and I didn’t have the same homeroom teacher but continued to grow our friendship when we both made the Elmore Park Elementary School cheerleading squad. Eighth grade found Sharon and me back in the same homeroom again, still cheer leading together and from then on, we became inseparable buddies.

At Nicholas Blackwell/Bartlett High School, Sharon was more popular than I was. I never really outgrew my shyness. (Still shy today.) We were in many of the same classes, joined a number of the same clubs, and participated in a lot the same activities. But where Sharon was the Queen of the Y-teens Snowflake Ball our senior year, I was just on the Snowflake Court, and then only because of my friendship with Sharon. Sharon was on the yearbook committee and a member of student council. I was on the literary magazine committee and in the art club. During eleventh and twelfth grades we double-dated and dieted together. And even went to work the spring of our senior year at the same neighborhood Shoney’s restaurant.

We drifted apart to for a period during college and shortly after college graduation, when I had moved away from Memphis. But were always able to catch up in letters or over the phone. Our first babies were born less than two months apart and we were both living in Bartlett during the summer of our mutual, hot and humid third trimesters! Several years later our second babies were born. They are less than a year apart. Now we are grandmothers together. Sharon is Minnie to her two-year-old granddaughter Ella and I am Mimi to my four-year-old granddaughter Cady. Their birthdays fall two years and just a few days from one another.

Over the past 25 years, I have only seen Sharon twice . In 2010, with the help of Sharon’s daughter Kendall, I surprised Sharon at the Lexington (KY) Airport. They were flying into Lexington for a golf tournament Kendall was playing in. It was so much fun to see the look on Sharon’s face when I walked up to her at baggage claim. We picked up right where we had left off the last time we had seen each other 20 years earlier. Two years later, I flew to Oklahoma to spend a few days in Sharon’s beautiful home. Again, we didn’t miss a beat. Talking, laughing, reminiscing.

 

 

And it continues to this day, texts and emails as we moved through our Monday. We share pictures of our OOTD (outfit of the day), photos of our families, our homes, our yards, even whatever we have fixed for dinner that evening. Sharon spoils me rotten with surprises and beautiful cards in the mail. I have learned so much from her about decorating, fashion, family and life.

 

In my post on September 10 entitled Life is a Book, I talked about how people come into our lives for reason, a season or a lifetime. Sharon is my friend, my best friend for a lifetime. For many reasons.