This story is about female friendships and how very special and important they are.
This is a new friendship with a fun story.
I’ve also been fortunate to have a 50 year friendship with my BFF but…that’s another story.
Enjoy.

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We were 17 and had a (half-baked) plan; get on a Greyhound bus in Detroit and head for southern California. It was that simple. However for a handful of reasons, that didn’t happen…but that’s another story.

We had an engagement ring in lay-away…and that’s another story.

Time happened and things began to fall apart. There were sad tears but no anger. We parted still caring about each other and yep…another story.

Twenty five years later, he slipped a wedding band on my finger. It’s still there.

I was curious about all the years between the sad good-bye and the life we share now.
I wanted to know every bit of his story; where he’d been, what he’d done, the best parts and the worse parts, all of it.

Being female, my first curiosity was the women of his life. How many? Turns out lots of girlfriends and three wives. I’m number three, but I’m also number 4…another story.

He told me something that I‘ve never forgotten, that over all the years and all the women, there’s only been two whom he ever really loved; his high school girlfriend (that would be me) and his college sweetheart and she is who this story is about.

He says they were crazy about each other.
What happened?
I’m sure that’s another story but not mine to tell.

I’d met wives number one and number two. I have two words, totally prejudice-free, mind you….NOT IMPRESSED!

But I had a curiosity about his college sweetheart. I asked a few questions about her (maybe it was a few thousand).
By the time he’d answered them all, I liked her.
I liked her real well. She sounded like she’d been a really awesome girl and I’m sure now, a just as awesome woman.

I wrote a short story about them. I didn’t use their names, so it could have been about any college sweethearts. It could have been fiction, but it wasn’t.
I never showed it to my husband Lobo, but thought about sending it to her. But why the heck would I do that?
I asked myself if I were that girl, all these years later would I want to read that story? Yes, I would. It’s a love story. I’m a romantic and I love, love stories.

I found her on good old Facebook and I sent her a friend request.
I forgot about it until one day weeks later, she accepted the request.
I sent the story.
She responded with a message commenting that it was a sweet story.
I was sure she knew who those two college sweethearts were.
And that was the end as far as she and I were concerned.

Fast forward many, many years.

Lobo and I followed a dream and moved to a little Hamlet of a town along the coast called Pacific Grove.

Moving means many things, among them, finding new doctors, dentists, vets and most important, a hair stylist.

The Carmel, Pacific Grove, Monterey area is always full of tourists and it seems every cute hairstyle that I saw and asked about was being worn by one of those tourists and their hair-dressers were thousands of miles away somewhere in Europe.

I questioned a saleswoman behind the Macy’s counter. She had a great haircut. She told me after trying three different salons she gave up and began cutting her own hair.
I went home, and with scissors in hand, I chopped until I was fairly satisfied with my work, but I continued to look for a professional stylist.

One afternoon while I was working in the bedroom, the TV was on and the woman on the commercial was asking for blood donors for the Red Cross. I glanced up. She had absolutely the greatest haircut ever. I called out to Lobo. I wanted his opinion of her hair.
When he entered the room, the expression on his face puzzled me. Why did he look like maybe he’d just seen a ghost? All I wanted him to do was take a look at a hairstyle. He turned to me instead of the TV.

“That’s her” he said, “I recognize her voice.” He looked over at the TV and yep that was her, his college sweetheart and…she was adorable (as I’d figured).

What a moment, both of us staring at the attractive woman talking on the TV, realizing that she was the girl who captured his heart once upon a time.

And she had the haircut I wanted but tracking her down and asking who did her hair was NOT gonna happen.

I eventually did find a stylist…from another woman on TV if you can believe that. Fortunately for me, she wasn’t an old girlfriend of Lobo’s.
She was a local newscaster and she had a great haircut. I called the station and asked the person who answered to please ask Kate where she had her hair cut. I was put on HOLD and in no time the person was back on the line with my answer. I made an appointment that day and went to that salon in Monterey for the seven years that we lived on that beautiful Peninsula.

Eventually we returned to Sacramento to be near our daughters.

It was COVID time, March of 2020.
Our sweet, sweet Labradoodle LooLoo headed off to the Rainbow Bridge.
We were devastated, our hearts were broken. If you’ve ever had to say good bye to your most favorite furry friend ever, well…you know.
Our last night with her, I lied on the floor and held her. I thanked her for all the happiness and love she gave to us.

Lobo and I had been toying with the idea of eating vegetarian. And so that night I promised LooLoo that we’d never put our teeth into the flesh of another animal again.

A few days later while on Facebook, I asked for suggetions on how to switch to eating vegetarian.

A message popped up suggesting a book that I should read to get started. I was beyond surprised when I saw that it was from the lovely woman from the Red Cross with the great hair. YES, the college girlfriend.

“Lobo,” I yelled out, “I’m facebooking with your old college girlfriend.”

Because I love to tease, he’s never sure when to believe me. But when I showed him her name right there on my computer, all he could manage was a slow head shake back and forth and his adorable smile that melts my heart every time I see it.

I ordered the book she recommended and read it from cover to cover excited to begin healthy eating.

I had a few questions. I wondered if she’d mind if I contacted her? I figured not, since she did offer advice in the beginning. I found out quickly that she was happy to help. We began communicating back and forth daily, first about food and eventually about everything but eating. We were becoming friends.

There’s something real about a friendship that starts with who we are, not what we look like.

From March to December of 2020, like so many in this country, actually this world, we were pretty much confined to our homes, hiding from the Covid monster.
The two of us hung on to our sanity and fought the isolation by sharing the stories of our lives and some of our deepest concerns and fears.
We found we had a ridiculous amount of things in common, and very few differences.

There was a freedom in revealing our thoughts and feelings with each other. A comfort knowing that what we wrote was safe. We had no friends in common (other than one old boyfriend) so who’d be interested in our stuff? Nobody!

We were fascinated with each other’s stories of how we became who we are today.

We’ve written about our happy and sad times and much of the in between times. We’ve shared our frustrations and we never run out of opinions. We’re absolutely sure if we were in charge, we’d have the problems of the world solved in no time. We complain about our aches and pains, our unruly hair, and days when we have little energy.

It’s now been over 3 1/2 years and our friendship has grown.
We are women friends as women friends should be; supportive, encouraging, and understanding.
We shine a light for each other when things seem to be dark.

We text and E-mail numerous times every day keeping each other informed on what’s going on in our lives at any given moment. There’s always something to write.

She sends her last message each evening after 8 pm. I write my first message every morning around 4 a.m.

On days when I’m feeling a bit down, she sends me vidoes of my happy place, the Pacific Ocean. When she’s in Pacific Grove for any reason, she always stops at Lover’s Point and videos where my sweet man and I took our daily walks for the seven years we lived in heaven.

On days she needs a boost, well…videos of Sacramento aren’t really gonna do it.

But we do know how to walk a mile in each other’s shoes and giving our perspective often gives clarity to whatever happens to be bothering us. We’re good at cheering each other up and, if we don’t have a solution for a problem, we do have lots of empathy and understanding. And humor, we both have a sense of humor. We’ve decided better to laugh at things than cry.

There is one constant message we share back and forth regularly and that’s a reminder that no matter what, we are two very lucky women. We’re aware of how quickly time seems to be passing at this point in our lives and so, we refuse to let one day go by that we don’t appreciate our good fortune of feeling happiness and love.

We’ve never spoken on the phone and although in the past 3 1/2 years, Lobo and I have spent probably half a dozen long week-ends on the Monterey Peninsula, she and I never made a plan to meet. Sometimes I thought we might never meet and I found that she felt the same…until now.

In less than two weeks, when my sweet man and I (and Rabbit) head for the coast, I have a luncheon date with a dear friend I’ve never met.

And that boyfriend that we both have in common?
He’ll be nowhere around.