My dearest friend and I are riding back home to Alabama from Georgia this morning under a clean pale blue sky, cloudless and bright. Nothing to mar our view except for the tree sap on the windshield and the condensation of our happy contented sighs. We’re on the last leg of our first adventure celebrating her joining the retirement world. We’re tired and happy from a weekend with my oldest son and his family. We were wined and dined royally, chauffeured right to the front door of the thrift stores and restaurants and ice cream parlors. My daughter-in-law made us a delicious quiche for breakfasts and cooked us tasty suppers. Makes better cornbread than me!

We went to the ballgame Friday night and enjoyed watching my oldest grandson in the high school marching band at halftime. We sat up till 2 am that night, sitting in the children’s den downstairs in our matching pajamas, eating cookies and laughing. I’d tell her we need to go to bed and she’d laugh and say, “Have another cookie.” We found a bag of Tate’s chocolate chip cookies on both our bedside tables. Left mine up there. Did not mean too! We ate all hers!

“The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it,” Hubert H Humphrey. I’m blessed with friendship. My dearest friend and I have been close friends for over 43 years. We met first at St. James Episcopal Church in Alexander City. We later casually ran into each other at the city library and discovered we both had a love for reading and we were both expecting our first child. Her son was born in January and my son in June. We followed with another pregnancy together. She had another son and we welcomed a daughter. We followed with another son but they were content with their two boys. Our children grew up together and still remain friends. We spent many happy days together when they were young. My family consider her family. She’s one of us.

This dear friend has supported me and loved me and held my hands and dried my tears many, many times. She’s a very warm hearted woman with a wonderful capacity to hug you and make it all right with the world. She’s very unassuming and doesn’t know she leaves a warm smile with every one she passes throughout the day. She knows how to laugh and enjoys a good joke. We’ve all laughed this weekend, a lot. My granddaughter and I taught her to play Blackjack. That brought lots of laughter as did our lively Go Fishing card games.

She loves a thrift store better than chocolate so we all headed off Saturday morning to go thrifting. Our first thrift store stop brought a near catastrophe, funny now but not then. We all went in different directions in the thrift store. My granddaughter went looking for crafts and we ran into each other in the furniture section. My son has been looking for an easy chair for his garage so he can sit in there with all his tool cabinets and watch the college football games. I saw this large handsome brown leather chair, nailheads on the arms, no worn places. I asked my granddaughter to sit in the chair and see if it was comfy.

Then, I asked her to see if it leaned back with a footrest. Well, I didn’t notice how close the chair was placed to the back corner of a large china cabinet. She barely leaned back and the chair knocked the china cabinet over. My granddaughter’s face flushed red and she had the “fight, flight, or freeze” look on her face. It scared her to death, me, too. The cabinet had double glass doors. We shut our eyes, waiting for the glass to hit the floor and break. The china cabinet hit a large sofa and ottoman as it fell. No broken glass! No broken cabinet! Nobody hurt! When we caught our breath, and I hugged her, she said, “Don’t tell mama!” I thought, “I’m not telling her!” Thank goodness God looks after fools and children!

Our adventure continued on from there. We went to Senoia after our morning of thrifting and did some shopping and ate lunch in that beautiful little quaint town. If you haven’t visited Senoia, Georgia put it on your to do list. Lots of movies have filmed there including two of my favorites — Sweet Home Alabama and Fried Green Tomatoes. Loved walking the street and seeing folks on the sidewalks leisurely strolling around looking in the store windows. Made me remember the Roanoke of my childhood. There is something so glorious and charming about small town America.

We went sightseeing Sunday, driving through some beautiful neighborhoods around Lake Peachtree. Frozen yogurt for the ride home, a delicious supper, few more card games and it was off to bed. We left early this morning to come home, watching the boys drive off to school in their golf cart. So when we got to Roanoke we went to Jack’s to get biscuits for breakfast. We had been looking forward to perching on my porch swings and eating our breakfast. She said something about Walmart and I just drove right by Jacks and into a parking place at Walmart. It’s a miracle I was able to drive us to Peachtree City and back. I know folks thought those two old ladies laughing in the car like hyenas were crazy. We get to Jacks, placed our order, asking for grape jelly, knowing good and well they would not put the jelly in the bag. Well, get home and we have grape jelly but we’re missing a biscuit! Honestly, I have somehow offended the Jack’s gods. And don’t say I should have learned by now how to look in the sack before I leave.

After a little thrifting here in Roanoke, my friend rode off in her little white car into the early afternoon sunshine with an “I love you,” and an arm full of bracelets wave bye.

“Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journey.” – Babs Hoffman