Twenty-five Years of Letters Increases Exponentially - An Update

As some of you know, I have had the privilege to enjoy a special friendship with Liz, my pen-pal of a solid quarter of a century. We did not lay eyes on each other for the first 24 years of our correspondence. But last spring, when I visited her in England we realized after talking non-stop for 5 days, that we were in fact fast friends.

She flew out from Britain this past week to attend my daughter's wedding, in spite of her children just returning to school from holiday and a husband embarking on a new project that really required all of his attention. As expected, we started talking, laughing and sharing stories from the second I greeted her at the international gate. What I didn't expect were the great rewards in sharing friends from near and far.

The night before my daughter's wedding, some of my best girlfriends gathered at my house to eat Italian Wedding Soup and stuff favors (lottery tickets) into little cellophane bags tied with ribbon. I circled the table, filling wine glasses and offering chocolates, donning the persona of a Hong Kong sweat shop tyrant that spewed,"Stuff more fastah! Stuff more fastah!" The pile of table decorations grew and conversation flowed.

My neighbor Bonnie talked about how she tried to eke out time to create hand made greeting cards when she wasn't plucking her two boys from the tops of cabinets or bodily inserting herself between them during fist fights. Cindy, one of the mothers from my Brownie troop, shared home decorating tips, and then confessed to her regularly losing the battle with housework in lieu of getting such things done. On a whim, she ran home, put together an amazing pen holder decorated with "Happy Together" and presented it as her contribution to the wedding sign-in table.

Karen, my own maid of honor, sat quietly taking it all in. She stuffed and stuffed, smiling from ear to ear. I reveled in her presence. She had just completed a year-long battle with breast cancer - and won!

The next day, when all hell had broken loose in the bridal prep room, my godmother Sharon arrived from Tucson. It was five minutes until the processional, and my daughter had yet to finish dressing. As is my custom when facing high stress situations, I dissolved into goofiness. While lacing up and tightening the back of Michaela's corset style dress, I started imitating Mammy from Gone With the Wind, admonishing her for her love of buckwheat cakes. Only Aunt Sharon and I understood the reference - and her laughter saved me from the quizzical looks of a bunch of 20-somethings who thought I'd finally gone round the proverbial bend. She and Liz bonded, shortly thereafter, and I hesitate to think of the damaging details of my past that they exchanged.                                                                                    

The day before Liz left, she visited my daughter's classroom. As luck would have it, the class was exchanging letters with another third grade in Illinois and also reading a story about a village in England. She spent half an hour answering questions like, "Are the Queen's teeth really green?" and never batted an eye. Danielle's teacher has since taken me aside and said what a remarkable impression Liz left on the kids. They all expressed an interest to visit the U.K. when they grew up.

On the last day of Liz's visit, we drove out to Canyon Lake, a reservoir east of Phoenix so that she could see something besides suburbs and freeways. During the drive, we talked about our lives, the success of the wedding, the unexpected joy of sharing our friendship with others, and how much richer we were for the experience. We laughed at the way in which she managed to break our hall toilet within hours of her arrival, and how I had silenced a raucous table of post wedding celebration with an ill-timed burp of mammoth proportions.

When we said good-bye, it was really just an "Au Revoir." We've planned a joint trip to Scotland next summer where our husbands will golf and we'll "natter!" At this rate, who knows how many others will be touched by the next 25 years of letters we plan to write!