I have known my friend Amy since Husband and I moved to this small town on the water seven years ago.  When she moved here her son was one year old.  Her husband was a stay at home dad and Amy and I worked for the same company.  They are good people; people of the earth.  They buy food from a Co-op.  They fish and crab and go clamming.  They grow much of their own veggies and are big into composting and recycling.  I wish I could be a bit more like them; more self sufficient and earthy.  Time passes.  Her son is now eight and she has a job that requires lots of travel.  I have since become a stay at home mom with two kids.  We are busy and don’t see each other much.

Last Friday I was finally able to attend my first Woman’s Club.  This is a great idea that Amy cooked up.  They meet once a month on a Friday evening.  They are all women who live in her neighborhood, except me.  I live across town, all 20 minutes of it.  As the name implies it is for Women only.  No husbands and no kids.  There is no goal or set purpose though I have heard that crafts were done at a previous meeting, beading if I remember correctly.  They rotate whose house the meeting is held. People bring homemade things, Danish pastries, chocolate oatmeal drop cookies, yellow melon, hummus.  There is wine.  And champagne.  Things just sort of flow.

The women of this club are old.  The women of this club are young.  Some have children and some don’t.  Some are married and some are not.  Some work and some stay home to raise their children, a type of work all unto itself.  Some of them I sort of knew and others I was meeting for the first time.  This meeting was held at Amy’s house in her backyard.  Various camping chairs and a couple wooden adirondack chairs made a half circle around a fire pit, a beautiful fire already cracking and dancing.  There was a feeling of timelessness – small groups of women meeting around an open fire.  This has been done before, over and over throughout the ages.  We took a brief tour of the gardens oohing and aahing over strawberries, garlic, chocolate mint, carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes.

We talked of many things; conversations humming like honey bees on a rhododendron in early Spring.  It was strange, like I had known them for a long time.  It was relaxing to chat or just listen.  It was a pause from the busy normal of life.  I am looking forward to the next one and already have a recipe picked out for a maple cake with brown sugar frosting to bring with me.