Whenever I heard the stories about the women in my family, I was proud of their tenacity and humor. As I began writing the stories, I realized that the theme that runs through all of them is value of deep relationships with other women.
My Grandma’s childhood friend, Cleo, worked with her to earn the money for an airplane ride when they were in grade school. They continued a letter correspondence into their nineties.
For her tenth birthday party, Grandma was allowed to invite three of her friends over to make their own dinner. Helen and Deanne were still coming over for dinner and Homemaker’s meetings during my lifetime (Cleo had moved to California).
Grandma and her sister-in-law, Imogene, became friends during the Depression and remained close through wartime, years of farming, the loss of their husbands, and finally as roommates in a nursing home.
For as long as she was able, my Grandma attended the annual Rogers school reunion. Even though the school and town no longer existed, the relationships they began in childhood persisted.
I’m inspired by lifelong friendships. I don’t believe these women were immune from being annoyed or being annoying. There has never been an age when relationships were easy. But they lived in a time when you couldn’t afford to trade in friends, so they did the work of apologizing, repairing, and forgiving. They learned to let some things go and to speak up when it mattered.