“Two in the trunk,” a term my husband Lobo and I learned while volunteering with the Food Bank during Covid.

I wonder, have you ever volunteered? If you have, then you know. It’s fun helping people. It feels good. It filled our souls right up to receive the warm smiles and heartfelt thank-you’s from grateful people as they drove through and we loaded groceries for them either in the back seat or the trunk.

Volunteers stopped the cars just before reaching us and they’d yell ahead to us the amount of bags and where to put them. And that’s where “two in the trunk” came from.

Got it?

But anyway, that’s NOT what this story is about.

This story is about TWO IN THE TRUNK alright but not two bags of groceries. It’s about my girlfriend Lynne and me. We were in the trunk  And here’s how it happened.

Lynne and I met in our late twenties. (Lord we were young.) We began as neighbors but before  long, we were way more than neighbors. We’d became the best of friends.

We aren’t neighbors any longer. We haven’t been neighbors for a long while but to this day Lynne is one of the great blessings whom I count in my life.

Back then we had 8, yep EIGHT kids between us. Four each. And they were all the same ages.

Without a doubt we were busy but we talked back and forth every day.

Most every week-end evening, we were together with husbands and friends….laughing the nights away and having fun with wine, great music and snacks from the 70’s. (Remember beer battered fried mushrooms, spinach dip, cheese logs all that good “bad” stuff”?)

Sometime during those many Saturday nights of the craziness and laughter, Lynne and I made a point of reminding each other that, “these are the good old days.” We knew it was true. I can look back now and smile and yep, they were our GOOD OLD DAYS.

There are times even now when we talk, we’ll remember something from way back then and the laughter returns. They were way far from easy days...way far, but still treasured good old days and how very awesome they were.

But back to two in the trunk

We came up with the thought one evening when we were sitting side by side in the back seat of  “Brown.” “Brown”was the name of my then husband’s “big” Suburban.

Lynne and I were complaining about the responsibilities of the everyday wife, mother and housewife.  We felt like we were behind the wheel of a car and responsible for every right turn, every wrong turn, every stop we made. We were making all the decisions just like with raising kids. We were responsible for the lives of eight kids and we had to do it right. We had to make every right turn for them. No crashes. It had to be a perfect ride for each of them. We were the two behind the wheels.

We drove those cars for quite a few years until one evening when we were exchanging stories, we realized that we weren’t really behind the wheels any longer. Somehow along the way, we’d been moved over to the passenger seat. The kids were a bit older and making some of their own decisions. We became two in the passenger seat and we were good with that.

But the day eventually arrived when one of us mentioned to the other that she felt she was sitting in the back seat. A short conversation later, we both realized that we had become two in the back seat. Our kids were graduating, had girlfriends, boyfriends jobs and their own cars.

Time passed. One day while talking on the phone it hit us. Our kids were adults, they were on their own, some married. They were making all of their own decisions. Oh for crap sake, we weren’t in the car any longer. We were in the trunk, TWO IN THE TRUNK. We were silent for a moment before we broke out into one of our wonderful laugh attacks. We were in the trunk. We really were. Now what?

We forgot about it for a while until one day during a conversation, the subject came up and both of us were feeling kicked out of the trunk!  Well, that called for a long time of laughter like the old days. We couldn’t talk, just long-distance laughed over the wires from California to Arizona. There we were, out in the cold, kicked out of the trunk, right smack out of the car.

Now what? Where were we now? The luggage rack on top the car or maybe behind the car being pulled by a trailer? Oh well and we laughed some more.

If you”re wondering where we are today, well we’re back behind the wheel only this time we’re in charge of the rest of the journey, it’s all about us and………. we’re still laughing.

I love you my dear friend Lynne.