Today, in between worrying about meetings and paying bills and Global warming, I had lunch with an old friend. And when I say old, I mean she's 85.
Frances is my former neighbor and we've stayed in touch the past 2+ years since I moved from Santa Monica. When we lived in adjacent studio apts, we would often watch movies together or have a cup of tea, or I would help her with her TV, or she would share the letter she was writing to the President (she does this often). One day, we discovered that we had the same special birthday, the Summer Solstice, June 21. I knew we were forever kindred spirits. We've had 2 birthday brunches since that discovery, and I look forward to another one this year.
At almost 86, Frances is as spry and "with it" as Estelle Getty from the Golden Girls. She attends weekly classes at the local Ameritus college (Shakespeare is her current favorite); she holds 2 PhD's and is fluent in Hebrew, Egyptian and Aramaic; she can navigate the internet but doesn't understand "that tweeting stuff"; Bogart and Bacall stood up in her wedding(!); she was recently in an unaired Windows/Mac commercial and says she would like to play someone's great grandmother in a movie; she loathes Brittney Spears and "loose girls like her" and adores "that William Shatner, he always has a little twinkle in his eye" (I told her we could probably cast her as his mother...and I'm not really kidding...Ry, pull some strings!); she always asks about Cole's Darwin project and I just don't have the heart to tell her we've shelved it for the moment; and she drinks a daily tonic that I've now dubbed The Frances. She swears it helps her live longer, and so Cole and I have started to drink it, too.
The Frances
2/3 cup cheap red wine
1/3 cup pomegranate juice
A splash of 7Up or spritzer
I think that cocktail, plus a healthy dose of good humor and a passion to change the world (even at her age, she still wants to help change health care and a million other issues like saving the whales and squirrels and any other furry creature), keep her living a full life. It dawned on me that she was born in 1924, same as my maternal Grandmother who left us some 20 years ago, who I still miss terribly.
I am so blessed to have met her, and am happy to call her a birthday twin.
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I'm thankful for Frances too! What an inspiration she is:)
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