Thanks be to Girls!

by Heather

Twis the night before Thanksgiving and I'm enjoying my living room.  My husband is watching t.v., my daughter is asleep, my dog is snoozing too, and I've got my feet up and the room is awash in Christmas tree lights and the scent of homemade soup. I have so much to be thankful for.  This year has been hard and fantastic all-at-once and in evenings like this it is easy for me to think on only the good with which I am blessed. The least of not which are a gaggle of girls with whom I have the amazing good fortune to have in my life; my suns and moons. (You like that, Nicole?!)

It was sometime in 1996, I think, when a few of us started to get together on Wednesday nights to watch 90210.  We had graduated from the College of Saint Benedicts in '95 and were living in various apartments throughout Minneapolis.  Quickly Party of Five became the main attraction. We gabbed through 90201 and made fun of the characters relentlessly and then seriously watched events unfold for Bailey, Charlie and the rest...well, mostly seriously but for land-blasting Nev Campbell's halting way of line delivery. (Ugh.) When PO5 ended, t.v. went to the back-ground and hanging-out together, and sharing good food, became the main attractions and has been so ever since.

A few girls have come and gone along the way. But most who have joined have stayed and now there are nine of us and all of us love all of us.

I could write oodles of emotional stuff about each of my eight dear friend's and their over abundance of attributes but I won't because it would probably embarrass at least of few of them.

What I will do is write that I am thankful for each and every one of them for a myriad of reasons: their hilarity and humility; their kindness and support; their distraction from the bad or help through it when needed; their ability to take themselves less than seriously at all times, for all that they've taught me and all that I have yet to learn from them and, of coarse, for all the great food we have created and shared over the years.

Thanks be to these girls and I hope upon hope that my daughter is as fortunate in her group of girlfriends as I am with mine.

Happiest of Thanksgiving to all and yours.