The Delight of You in My Life:

I talk often about how much I love you all. The GIFT I absolutely feel in having amazing people in my life. It is a gift. YOU are a delight.

We are older. The fragility of life and our time on this earth has become more relevant. A month after this photo was taken, one of our loves lost their Mama. The importance of these relationships- knowing that we love and are loved, it is a sacred gift.

Today’s Delight is brought to you by my amazing friend JoBeth: aka Jingo, Chippy, Jo-El, and all around amazing person. She is a talented writer, lover of life and someone I have loved and laughed with for 30 years.

I just celebrated her 50th. Today I got this note in the mail about our time together. I think it speaks to so many of us about our cherished relationships- and it is a delight.

Thank you note from Jingo:

My Dear, Dear Friends:

It’s hard to believe it has now been months since you all descended into the Valley of the Sun like rock stars at the start of a tour. There is a part of me that is ashamed and embarrassed at taking so long to write a thank you note, but there is another part of me that has been in denial that we are all back to the realities of our pandemic, adulting lives. Denial looks like this: It took me a week to break down the fancy dinner table that you guys made look like a 5 star restaurant. It took me two weeks to admit that the flowers in the mason jars were finally droopy and brown enough to let go. It took three weeks to take the Coronas out of the Yeti cooler on the patio (because we forgot about them). It took until Thanksgiving to find the last olive from someone’s bloody mary still intact in the deep end of the pool. And much to Eric’s chagrin, the cards you placed strategically for me to find and open are exactly where you left them- in my cupboard, in my cookbook, the the freezer with the beer glasses, and probably some other places I still haven’t discovered.

A friend’s dad used to say that life is like a roll of toilet paper- and while I’m sure there are a shit ton of reasons one could insert here as to why this is, his particular thought was that because the closer you get to the end, the faster is goes. I certainly don’t feel like 50 is the end, but I do feel, with the exception of house projects, that everything seems to be moving quicker than I feel prepared for. While four days with you probably felt like an eternity to my liver, the rest of me felt those days were more life the first seasons of Ted Lasso, over way too soon. I kinda wanna go back and replay them until our next episode begins. Alas, the spin cycle of adulting waits for no fermented air-fiddle player.

As I have finally conceded to reality and decided to scrape the freezer burn off that last card, to see all your names (and your collective nicknames for me), and to feel all the joy you brought to Arizona, I have been focused on how much that time filled me and how lucky I am, not just for the kick-ass celebration but the friendships that made it so. For a person who has hugged her way through life and who finds the greatest highs in belly laughing and just being in close proximity to my people, the prolonged social austerity of a pandemic may have made me physically plump, but spiritually, I was living on fumes. While the long weekend may have picked my innards, it also nourished and oxygenated them and the world around me.

My goddess/god/ genderless sky monkey, what a GIFT it has been to experience you love, support, HUMOR and HUMOR, and your countless gifts for literally and figuratively the better part of my life. And what a gift is was that you all trained, planed and automobiled to the desert to be in-person reminders of how fanfuckingtastic my 50 years on this earth have been. I can’t and don’t want to imagine where or who I would be without all of you. That our incredibly unique and wholly special connection continues and grows even now give me such a feeling of pride and strength. I truly love each and all of you more than I can say. I love your spirits, your talents, your insights and intelligence, again- your HUMOR, your hearts, your voices, your stories, your families, our stories and our family.

Until next time, my mountains-