Shopping with my BFF

I’m going shopping with my best friend today. We were going to go Saturday, but the Aggies were winning a football game on Kyle Field, which meant College Station was one huge tailgate party.

I love shopping with Wynell. We both like similar things, so we’re constantly holding up outfits for each other and saying, “You should try on this.” Chico’s is our favorite boutique, but we only look at the sale rack now. Macy’s is on the list because… well, honestly, Macy’s always has a sale going on. And then we hit the off-price/discount stores: Marshalls, DSW, and TJ Maxx.

My sweetie says there is no room for more clothes because I have already taken over three closets in the Navasota home and one closet in the Houston condo. But he’s wrong. I recycled four bags of skirts, dresses, jackets, and shoes last week.

Besides that, it is not necessary to actually buy something when I go shopping with my BFF. The most fun is to take different things from different racks and put them together, such as a red jacket with grey slacks, and an ivory silk blouse, paired with several ropes of pearls and silver hooped earrings. I call it playing Barbie, grown-up style. (People in the stores call it fashion merchandising and pay employees to do it.) When we’re through with our pairings, we may or may not buy. After all, the real fun is in the shopping.

My cousin Barbara Jean and I have shopped our way through Hawaii, Ireland, Greece, and Israel. As a result, I have the most exquisite scarves, spectacular earrings, and unique rings. My “aunt” Alice and I can shop anywhere, even in an airport, and find great sales items. We shopped for silver and turquoise one year in Santa Fe, and when we returned a whole year later, three different shop keepers in three different stores remembered us. Not because we bought all their merchandize but because we always make shopping such a party. (Okay, maybe we did buy some pretty amazing pieces, but we left a lot on the counter as well.)

When my childhood friend Charlotte was still alive, she, her younger sister Janice, and I would go to the various church Christmas festivals around Houston and to the specialty shops in Kemah every year. We entertained each other with the wildest “finds” for the relatives on our lists and laughed till our sides hurt. We would hit downtown Macy’s for its after-holiday sales, which was always so empty on a Saturday that it was like having our own private store. Janice still has a Y2K sweater she got for mere pennies on the dollar. It is a stunning designer sweater that should be good for any New Year's Eve party until the next millennium.

I am amazed that there are women who hate shopping. Not me. I go every chance I get. Maybe it’s because shopping isn’t so much about the clothes and accessories  as it is about friendship and being with the girlfriends I love. 

Valentines

When I was moving this year, I found an old Valentine’s card from my ex-husband. The card had the inscription: The best is yet to be. We divorced two years later. He broke my heart, and I didn’t think life had much to offer… I was just marking time, wanting and waiting to die.

In the cycle of life, after all endings come new beginnings. Not immediately, however. There is a middle ground—I call it the wasteland, that desert where you wander in your howling grief, being stripped down to the bare bones of you, sustained only by daily manna from God.

Barbara, Jackie, Maya, Elda, Charlotte and Wynell were my manna. They were unrelenting in their care; they fed and comforted me when I could not.

I stayed in that wasteland until I could let go of my old way of being and walk out, a “new” person. I did not jump into a new relationship after my divorce (Thank you, God!). I don’t think it was because I had good sense; I believe it was because I trusted God to lead me rather than my pushing or rushing to a new beginning. It has been a long road, but as I always believed in my heart, when I got to the other side, I knew it would be worth the hard lessons and time alone to find out exactly who I am at my core.

There is a new man in my life. We met twenty years after my divorce, and we have been together for almost three years. For Valentine’s Day, I received such a surprise when I arrived home… the sweetest bouquet of pink tulips sat right inside the front door, a bouquet of long stemmed red roses greeted me in the kitchen—along with a box of chocolate truffles—and a bouquet of red roses awaited me in the bedroom. Ron did not do this because he felt he had to compete with a memory or impress me with grandeur. He did it because he knew I didn’t expect it, and he delights in surprising me.

On Valentine’s night we went out to a local restaurant to listen to a band we know. Misslette reminded the audience that God loved us first, so if anyone was alone, to remember that none of us is alone or unloved. Truer words have never been spoken.

The last song Misslette performed was Etta James’s “At Last,” and Ron danced with me. The next morning I thought about the line in Robert Browning’s poem. The entire first stanza of the poem—not just one line—describes my life today.

GROW old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in his hand

Who saith, ``A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''

 

Where are you in the turning points of your life today—at an ending, beginning or betwixt (in the wasteland)?