My Flower Girls

Hey there again…

It’s 11:53 pm (soon to be an hour less due to the time change) and I am eating dinner finally.  Smoked garlic-lime beef shishkabobs (a marinade you definitely have to try...I've posted the recipe under my page: "A little of This and That") and garlic mashed potatoes.  I started dinner at a respectable 5 o’clock, but with just about anything cooked on the pit you have to give yourself at least an hour grace period, especially when you have to marinate, then let the meat rest and  smoke till tender.  Supper wasn’t edible till around 9:30…but even then, I wasn’t ready to eat.

I am eating so late because I had a wonderful phone date with my girls back home.  This is a perfect opportunity to let you meet them.  I will change their names for sake of privacy...but just to let them know, their names will be changed to something else that starts with the first letter of their actual name…

My “girls” are a collaboration of cousins and wives of cousins.  The main group consists of me plus 4….Gerber, Aster, Daisy, and Rose (remember...made up and I am a florist a heart, so I went with flowers. For this entry I am Juniper : ).  Growing up and on into adulthood, I didn’t really ever have a big group of girlfriends. Right before we had our first child, my husband and I moved out to the country near (actually right on top) of a bunch of my family.  I quickly became very good friends with a circle of girls.  Even though we are all very much different, it's easy, maybe because we are all family of sorts.  Whatever it may be, it works.  Sure there’s the occasional drama that inevitably comes from a bunch of women, but at the end of the day (and maybe a bottle or 2 of wine) we come together and love one another for every fault, quality, talent and whatever else that makes us who we are. 

When I was moving from Texas to Iowa, they threw me one last little hurrah and gave me a beautiful James Avery butterfly ring.  I was wearing it when my husband and I went out with one of his high school buddies during the first month we were back in Iowa. On the ride to the resturaunt, Nate and his friend sat up front and I wedged myself between the boys carseats in the back.  When we arrived and I was crawling over one of the carseats, I didn’t realize I was holding the front door’s frame.  When our guest slammed his door shut, my entire right hand was slammed in with it.  I thought for sure all 4 of my fingers were broken.  I didn’t feel anything, but I figured it was shock numbing me.  The guy had no idea what had happened until I finally found my voice and as calmly as I could, asked him to open the door.  Not wanting to asess the damage…I slowly moved my fingers.  It appeared everything was still intact, all but one little nick from where the butterfly’s wing on the ring had been pushed into my skin…it had saved my hand.  Not only that, but it wasn’t the least bit bent…now that’s some Guardian Angel stuff.  I feel like even a 1000 miles away, my girls still have my back.

Gerber is married to one of my closest cousins.  My cousin and I are only 3 months apart and were best friends growing up.  We always said it would be neat to have our kids be as close in age so they could have what we had.  Sure enough, Gerber and I got pregnant a month a part (to the day)  with each of our first children.  Up until we moved, our kids were great playmates.   That has been one of the hardest things about moving….I know toddlers forget so quickly.
From the first time I met Gerber, I knew it was BFF’s for life.  We have been through a lot together and time only brings us closer.  I did the flowers for her wedding, she was there for the birth of my 2^nd son.  We lived together for a hot minute and have spent countless days sitting and drinking coffee on her front porch visiting.  Man I miss those days.

Aster is the only one out of the girls that is my blood.  We are first cousins, 4 years apart and she has always been my hero.  As a little girl I looked up to her and secretly pretended she was my big sister.  I am so grateful that as adults we have become such wonderful friends.  We may not talk often (even when I was still in Texas), but when we do it’s like no time has passed.  She has one little girl that reminds me a little of myself when I was young...totally ok with not having a girl of my own, I will just live vicariously through her.   Our husbands (I  have also known her husband  since I was a kid) get along great and it’s always a hoot and a holler when the 4 of us get together, let loose, enjoy some good tequila or wine, great food and fine cigars (well the guys anyway).   

Daisy (that’s cool daisy works for her name, it’s her favorite flower) is a married in, but if she isn’t family I don’t know what is.  She is some kind of super glue that binds us all.  She is a wonderful woman full of layers.  We have been friends since her kids were in my wedding years ago.  I hardly knew her then, but that didn’t stop her from staying up till all hours of the night before my big day, helping me get all the flowers done.  We became closer over the years…she witnessed the birth of my first son (and then some in that delivery room...apparently the baby wasn’t crowning) and I witnessed her last.  She has pulled me through one crisis after another and snapped me out of many emotional spirals and back into reality on more than one occasion (my 2 and 3 year old are less than 13 months apart…I’m allowed to be a little nuts).  After the birth of her 3^rd child and becoming a stay at home like me, we spent many days carting around kids, shopping for unnecessary things and eating lots of oh so missed Mexican food.  Mmmmm….Chuy’s.

Rose and I have kind of a quiet friendship.  She’s a sweet but strong one. We are very similar in so many ways… but sometimes those are the things that make us go for long periods of time without hearing from each other.  I’m horrible keeping in touch and getting wrapped up in whatever I am doing at the moment.  She has boys like me (but one more, I can’t even imagine) and is in school, so she stays plenty busy.  Her boys are so great with my boys…again, hard to move away from that.  Her and her husband (my cousin, are you getting all this straight?) are another couple we get along with great.  Football season is here again and I miss getting together, firing up the grill and yelling obscenities at the game.

Tonight was Daisy’s son’s birthday slumber party.  This means the husbands and the sons all gather at someone’s house. The boys do boy things and the husbands have a few beers and probably play music (that’s my family). The women take the itty bitty babies and daughters and go to another house to drink wine and be a little silly.  This is how I got my phone date. Knowing they would all be together, I called to crash the party.  I had a nice long chitchat with each of them (minus Rose, she couldn’t make it : (
and it almost felt like I was there with them, hanging out in the backyard, sipping the wine and laughing about anything and everything.

It is so bittersweet…I miss them all terribly.  However it is such needed therapy to hear all their voices having such a great time enjoying one another.

So it’s now much later then when I started…I am going to finish my wonderful food and call it a night.  I just had to give props and credit for my survival to the fabulous women back in Texas that are awaiting my return.

True Friendship is the key to a great deal of sanity. It takes a real friend to understand your crazies and make you feel "normal". I have 4. I am a very, very lucky woman.