Nell generally is the main organizer of the group -- she is persistent about finding a location for us, she makes the reservations, and she even maintains a list of what we need to remember what to bring each time. Nancy always makes sure her car is all checked out and ready to go, even if the trip is only as far as Rappahannock County. All of us bring way too much food, and the knitters bring loads of wool and several projects apiece.
This is our fifth escape. They started out as beach trips, even though we can only go during the winter or early spring because of my scheduling limitations. Every trip has a different setting but we always cook and eat and laugh and talk. Sometimes we take walks. We always knit and if there is a knitting store in the vicinity, we patronize it loyally.
Tonight we are all sitting around in our cozy living room, where we staked out our spots on the first afternoon. We are surrounded by our bags of yarn, our iPads, water glasses. There is a nice fire in the stove and the house is quite decorated for Christmas. In the last few days we have told stories about our childhoods (music, singing, going to camp) and we have discussed all the ways that we would like to change the world and we have talked about current national politics way more than we meant to.
We are an amazingly well matched group, conversationally. We also have sat very quietly for long periods and yesterday afternoon we all took a nap here in this living room -- perhaps the first time in my life that I have been in a room with three other adults, all asleep in couches. I can see us doing this for many years to come, as our physical demands on ourselves are minimal. When my siblings do these retreats, they like to do something that gets their hearts pounding. These days I would have a hard time snowshoeing in Colorado or cross country skiing in West Virginia. I couldn't do it, actually.
We decided to make the driving part of the trip shorter this time, and Nell found us a little renovated farmhouse in this teeny little town of Sperryville, just 90 minutes from home. It amuses me greatly to be within walking distance of Waterpenny, where we have been many times to visit Rachel and Eric and kids. Part of our little tour of this town today included a visit to the building where Rachel and Eric got married 13 years ago. The town is a tourist destination, with art galleries, artists, pottery shops, good restaurants. We have done our bit to support the local economy in the last few days, buying gifts and art and lunches and dinner -- but it is fun to shop at these small businesses with really nice stuff. Nothing plastic, nothing from China.
Anyway, we feel very lucky. Lucky to have such good friends, lucky to be able to go away together, lucky to have endless conversation material. It usually takes us a whole day to get all the temple topics out of our way -- we always have so much to chew on as we are all still engaged in leadership roles, one way or another.
Last night while we were sitting around the table, someone knocked on the door. We don't live here, so we weren't quite sure who would be knocking, but I had an inkling. Sure enough, there were some Boy Scouts and some parents on the porch, ready to sing us some Christmas carols. We sang with them, knowing all the words to Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Unsure whether this was part of the tradition, we offered them some chocolate as thanks. It was nice to be welcomed, and our house is quite decorated and lit up, so they had some reason to think we might be observing the holiday. As they were leaving, the dad said he hoped that we were having a nice bridge party.
The title of this post is Friday Club because that is one of the names of this group (based on Carolyn Newcomb's threesome who met every Monday for decades), but we are also self-named Beach Babes and Hannah's father has called us the Mouseketeers (and wishes he were invited on our retreats).
Anyway, it has been a delicious few days here in a county with no stop lights and very few distractions. We arrived, parked the car, and have not got back in. We have walked to all our destinations, which were about ten minutes away at the most distant. We are rested. Mission accomplished.
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