Lunch with the Ladies

Yesterday I said we'd go to lunch with the ladies. It was neighbor Donna's birthday and we were celebrating.

We didn't go for Chinese food.



We didn't eat at Alice's Place because she's closed for the season.



And we certainly did not eat chicken fricasee cooked over an open flame.



What we did do was go for barbecue at Hopper's Place, a new joint not far from here. But I can't show you the delicious sweet potato fries or barbecued brisket piled sky high on a toasted bun. Why? Because the camera's memory card was back at the house, resting in the card reader.

A great writer wouldn't need photos. They be able to create picture in the mind's eye, fashioned merely from words. But I'm not a great writer and so instead of describing the meal I'll tell you about what I took away from yesterday's lunch.

I thought briefly about driving back home to retrieve the memory card but that would have made me terribly late. And in the end the time with my friends was more important than some photographs. My lunch could have been ruined if I had agonized over the mistake but then I wouldn't have been in the moment.

This group of women run the spectrum of personality and experience but we all have one thing in common. We're all old enough to have learned the importance of being human, allowing ourselves to be imperfect. Perfectly imperfect would be a good way to describe it.

I worked with a young woman who tried so hard to achieve perfection in all things. Somehow she bought into the idea that she needed to be superwoman. I warned her of the dangers of such a philosophy but somehow she thought that achieving perfection would give her a feeling of accomplishment. She was only human and unable to achieve perfection consistentl. In the end only felt failure.

The ladies at lunch are an amazing group, and we've created for ourselves a common ground where we're able to celebrate our imperfections....our humanness. Is that a word??

Don't forget that tomorrow is our weekly trip in the Way Back Machine!