Life Is Not A Snapshot

Articles from Boomer Magazine in Richmond, VA

Life Is Not A Snapshot - Lori's Blog

Written by Lori Ross

Thursday, 06 May 2010 09:27

Last week was a time for this boomer woman to have fun with my favorite boomer women. Besides meeting with seven of my grade school and/or high school friends for a Hilton Head vacation, I shared my car on the way down with Nora Ephron. The writer of “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle” is technically a little older than a boomer, but I’m claiming her anyway. Listening to her audio book of “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” Nora had me laughing out loud telling stories about herself as a woman with some years on her. We are nothing alike, yet so similar. She’s a Jewish woman living in Manhattan. I was raised Catholic and mainly lived my life in one suburb or another. Nora had me laughing mainly over the things women can relate to — like the depths of an unorganized purse or losing “the love” for a politician we had high hopes for.

Nora and I arrived to join with Dana, Betty, Debbie, Kathy, Suzie, Sue and Barb. At our core, we are the same women who went on trips together in our teens and twenties. But now we’re grandmothers. I still remember the hot foxes we were, turning heads at 27 in Chicago. In those days we felt older (comparatively) because we’d known each other since we were in single digits. We didn’t realize then that in the future we’d think 27 was young. Now we show pictures of the daughters and sons who got married last year or the grandchildren. We used to get together sometimes and crack up about our past funny stories from school but they are so long ago that they don’t seem as relevant any more. When we get together at 85, I'll be thinking about when we were all healthy and in the thick of life in our 50s at Hilton Head. Age is relative. Even my 6-year-old granddaughter probably feels old compared to her little brother.

All of us have full lives outside the relationships we have with each other, yet there is a special bond with the girl who was your first best friend, or your old roommate or your biology project partner. These people knew you before you had a professional life, children, spouse or any common sense whatsoever. These were the people that it was so easy to laugh at a joke with for at least an hour. These were the people who knew where you came from. The ones who knew all the same nuns and teachers and the values you were raised with that’s in the deepest center of your existence. These are the people who you know you’ve been able to count on for as long as you have memory. You don’t think you can count on them — you know it.

Life is not a snapshot — and these are the people who see the whole picture.