There we are, in all our “we graduated from high school 20 years ago” glory; my magnanimous lunch table.  The original lunch bunch.  A trio of girls ready to take on the world: Hillary, Lori, and Lydia.  And take on the world we have.  I wouldn’t even dare to count up how many times the 3 of us have moved or how many miles have separated us over the past 20 years.  Or even how many times we have lost track and found one another.  After all, we graduated from high school before there were cell phones, email, twitter, Facebook…hell people, we didn’t even have pagers.  We actually HAND WROTE letters to each other at our separate colleges!  Did I mention BY HAND?  Like what are we, EIGHTY YEARS OLD? OK fine, I’ll say it: I took a TYPEWRITER to college.  I was quite the techie.  At Purdue.  I took a typewriter to PURDUE, where the President is an astrophysicist.  And I wonder why I never quite fit in….

This Christmas brought me a blessing for which I am deeply grateful: we were together again, all 3 of us, for the first time in 20 years.  For one blessed day, and let me tell you now, not a second had passed between us.  It was as if we saw each other yesterday.  Our daughters played together as if they were old pals…must have been passed on in our genes.  We simply shared some time, without wild planning or fanfare, and it was absolutely perfect.

If you would have told us 20 years ago that at our 38th year, Hillary would have finished her graduate work and would be teaching in a deeply humanitarian setting, we would have said, “Yep, that sounds ’bout right”.  Hey Lydia, you’ll be finishing your PhD with plans to spend the second half of your jet-setting career in academia…”Yes, yes…that seems quite probable.”  Lori, you’ll flounder around like a fish out of water through your 20′s because you are crazy that way, and then get your act together, grow into a career you love, land one heckuva hottie almost 7 years younger than you, have children and drive a mini-van, and quit that great job because you are OUT OF YOUR MIND…I know 3 women who would have said, “Ahhhh, BINGO.”

I can say this much for sure: 20 years will not pass between us again.  Girls weekend?!  Chicago?  Or whatever is geographically feasible, which for us…might be ANYWHERE!