My long-time friend Barbara's birthday is July 6 and mine is August 7. I'm three years older but we have been friends since 1967. She belongs to a group of friends who raised kids together and we all remain close to this day. After 26 years of marriage, Ray and I had separated in 1984 and Barbara and I began to take short trips together as I adapted to my new life. We had a zany friend, Rick, who had a custom of not signing his greeting cards as he wanted people to be able to use them again themselves. Talk about sustainability! So, we came up with the idea of exchanging the same whacky birthday card for years to come, each one of us adding a message to each other on the same card, our version of frugality. This tradition started in 1985 and goes until this day.
Here are a few of the panels.
A few times one or the other of us misplaced the card and now we have two cards as we started another for the missing years.
To keep from losing the card(s), I finally made a file called Birthday Card in my file cabinet, as I am always the last person to get the card.
Another long tradition is that Barbara, Mary Lou and I get together and exchange gifts on our "mutual" birthdays. Mary Lou's is July 10. We met for the umpteenth time today at Il Fornaio and had our waiter take our photo. Here's to friendship, Barbara and Mary Lou. We sure have done a lot of living together.
