Sisterchicks on the Loose (29 page)

Gloria became seriously ill about six years ago. I went to her house every day to care for her and to make dinner for Grandpa Max. Her illness lingered, and she became bedfast. She and Max moved in with us, and I loved on her good for
eight months until she had a seizure that sent her into a deep, dark place where she only sang the low notes. Grampa Max and I were with her when she quietly passed away. I’ve often felt grateful that I made peace with Gloria before she was called upon to make peace with God.

Our son Ben had a rough stretch after the flagpole incident when he broke his wrist. God kept His hand on this “son of my right hand.” But Gloria was the one who ministered to him with cakes during his down times and sent him boxes of cookies when he went off to college. Last summer Ben married a fiery, red-haired girl. I adore her.

I’ve loved just about everything in this season of life. Maybe I really am in the best years now. Penny and I laugh when we look at pictures of ourselves when we were thirty and forty years old and think of how we used to complain that we were getting so old or so fat or that we had too many bulges and wrinkles.

What a joke on us! We were young, and we looked good. Now we
are
getting old, but we feel good. We’re free.

Last night I felt so free I did something I’d never done before. All week here at Kiitos Cottage the weather has been perfect. Yesterday was a balmy seventy-two degrees with primrose blue skies. The fingers of Maple Leaf Lake were tap-tapping persistently on the shore all afternoon as I wrote. The water beckoned me to come in and seize the final days of this Indian summer warmth before fall rode in on a chilling wind and took the brilliant colored leaves for a jovial spin.

I decided I was the one who should go for a jovial spin. I’d just finished writing everything I wanted to say about Finland, and I wanted to mark the moment with a little celebration.

Twilight dimmed the lights of day so that all the stars could
come out in their bare, shining glory. I wanted to join them. I slipped out of my shorts and sweatshirt and padded down to the water’s edge in my elegant black undies. Wading into the cooling waters that had baked all afternoon in the sun, I lifted my arms in an act of solitary worship to the One who made the stars and sent them spinning through the galaxies.

No words were left in me to give Him in that moment. So I gave Him my tears.

That’s when He pushed the moon, that eternal night-light, up just over the top of the cedar trees. I lowered myself into the water and stretched out so that I was floating on my back, watching that perfectly round, vastly golden moon as it bobbed in the water beside me.

I imagined that the shivering tickles on the back of my neck were tiny fish that had come to greet me with little fish kisses. As I floated, I noticed that the moon now bobbed on my other side.

“Imagine that!” I said to the stars. “The moon has just jumped over me!”

I slept deep last night. When I woke this morning I tidied the cabin, set out my forget-me-not teapot with matching teacup along with Penny’s daisy teacup. Her plane left San Francisco at seven in the morning, which meant I should start listening for her rental car on the gravel road around nine-thirty. As soon as she arrived, I knew we would sit on the front porch and have our traditional pot of tea along with whatever bakery muffins or bagels she had managed to grab on her way to the airport.

With care, I placed the journal of my Finland memoirs on the porch swing where Penny usually sat and went inside to start the teakettle. I couldn’t wait for her to read our story and
for the two of us to begin our weekend of doing what we did best, which was just being us.

That’s when I heard the crush of tires on gravel coming down the long road to Kiitos Cottage. Peeking out the window above the kitchen sink, I spotted a sleek, silver convertible flashing through the row of pine trees. The driver wore sunglasses and a long, hot pink, polka-dotted scarf around her neck that fluttered like a banner declaring wild, wonderful freedom as brightly as possible.

But something was different.

I stepped out on the porch and watched the car come to a pebble-spinning halt. The woman in the pink scarf flipped up her sunglasses and stepped out of the convertible with a large white pastry box.

I stood still for a moment.

Oh, Penny Girl, what have you done?

Her hair was shockingly short, the way the grannies had worn theirs in Finland. It was also white. As bleached white as the pastry box she held in her hand.

“I brought your birthday cake,” Penny called out the moment she spotted me. “I figured, why eat muffins with our morning tea when we can eat cake? Chocolate, of course.”

“Of course.” I wrapped my arms around her and drew in the fresh floral notes of her expensive perfume. She planted her signature greeting kiss on my right cheekbone, and I returned the same.

“Love your hair,” I told her.

“Do you? Really? I got tired of fighting the gray, but I thought it might be a little on the wild side.”

I laughed. “You, a little on the wild side? Never.”

Well,” Penny said with a grin, “at least it didn’t turn green!”

I laughed with her as we linked arms and headed for the front porch of Kiitos cottage, our breakfast of chocolate cake in hand.

Forever eighteen. Forever knit together by the same hands that dimpled the moon with His thumbprint. Forever sister-chicks.

1. What do you think Penny meant when Ben broke his wrist and she told Sharon, “This will be the making of him”?
   
2. How do you think your family and friends would respond if you announced that you were taking a trip like the one Sharon and Penny went on?
   
3. How would the trip have been different if Penny and Sharon had waited and went after their children were all grown?
   
4. Do you think Sharon truly resolved her conflicts with Gloria? Why?
   
5. What relative or acquaintance might God want to love through you? What action could you take to show God’s love to that person?
   
6. Do you think Penny should have told Sharon about Wolf, or would it have been better to leave the past as the past?
   
7. Why was the communion service in the Helsinki church so different for Sharon, and how do you think it changed her?
   
8. If you, like Jesus’ disciples, cast your net on the other side of your boat of life, what do you think you would catch? What would make that change in your life risky?
   
9. In what ways could you be clothed in strength and dignity? What new “garb” would you need?
   
10. Recall a time you’ve ever been in Elina’s position and had “imposing” company arrive at an inconvenient time. Compare how you handled it with how Elina did. Did you or Elina do better?
    
11. When Penny and Dave were first married, they had very little and lived in substandard housing. When Sharon was without her luggage, she found she could get by with much less than usual. Tell about a time in your life when you lived with just the basics. How did you feel?
    
12. What were the key elements that drew Sharon and Penny into a friendship and prompted Penny to dub them “sisterchicks”?
    
13. If you had an opportunity to go on a sisterchick adventure to any place in the world, where would you go and whom would you want to take with you?
    

The publisher and author would love to hear your
comments about this book.
Please contact us at
:
www.multnomah.net/robinjonesgunn

Former College Roomies Make
Waves on Waikiki

Some dreams take a while before they come true. Best friends Hope and Laurie never made it to Hawaii during their college years. But when they’re about to turn forty, the islands still beckon, and off they go—with an unexpected stowaway on board. A little pineapple, a little sunshine, and a surprising little surfing lesson give these two sisterchicks all their crazy hearts could hope for—and more—as they enter the next season of their lives with a splash and with a beautiful vision of what God has dreamed up for them.

ISBN 1-59052-226-5

In five days Laurie and I were scheduled to meet up in Honolulu. What triggered my meltdown was an ordinary box that arrived on my doorstep in the snow. Inside was my maternity bathing suit.

Blithely carrying the box upstairs, I drew the curtains, closed the bedroom door, and peeled off layers of warm clothes. Relieved that the back-ordered item had arrived in time, I wiggled my way into the new swimsuit, slowly turned toward the mirror on the back of the bedroom door, and took in the sight of my blessed belly wrapped in swaddling aqua blue spandex.

First the front view. Then the side. Other side. Twisting my head over my shoulder, I got a glimpse of the backside. Then quickly returned to the front view.

I was shocked! Completely shocked!

The woman in the mirror shook her head at me.
“You’re not considering going out in public wearing that, are you?”

“Yes?” I answered with a woeful sigh. “Although, I didn’t think it would look like this on me.”

“Oh, really? And just what did you think it would look like on you?”

“Well, not like this.”

For months I had been riding high on the “blessed-art-thou-among-women” cloud. I considered it a privilege to carry this baby. I told myself I was participating in a calling that was higher than fashion and charm. Who cares about beauty? The truth was, my body was nurturing new life.

However, truth and beauty had crashed head-on in my bedroom mirror.

“I like this shade of blue,” I declared, trying to be positive.

“Yeah? Well, from where I’m standing, that shade of blue does not appear to be too fond of you, sweetheart.”

“Maybe I could return this one and order the black one instead.”

“
Right, because everyone knows that black is always so much more slimming.”

“There was that black one with the little pleated skirt …”

“
Okay, yeah, there you go. Because nothing says
dainty
like Shamu in a tutu
.”

“Hey!” I turned away and covered my belly as if to protect Emilee’s ears from this audacious woman. “You don’t have to be rude about it!”

“
Look who’s talking
.”

I glared over my shoulder at the mannerless minx and found I couldn’t say anything. I could only stare at her. At myself. At what I had become. How did this happen?

How could it be that my two dreams had intersected this way? Innocent little Emilee Rose was my dream baby come true. A trip to Hawaii with Laurie was a dream that had waited patiently for two decades to come true.

But someone had taken my two best dreams and poured them into a single test tube when I wasn’t looking. Now the churning, foaming result bubbled over the top and ended up larger than life in my bedroom mirror. There she stood, defying me to accept the truth.

I was old.

And I was not beautiful. How had those two facts escaped me in the bliss of being a middle-aged life bearer?

Fumbling my way out of the aqua swimsuit and trying to stop the ridiculous flow of big, globby tears, I turned my back on the mirror and plunged into my roomiest maternity clothes. Leaning against the ruffled pillows that lined our bedroom window seat, I inched back the curtains and let the tears gush.

Outside, an icy January snowstorm was elbowing its
way down the eastern seaboard, causing the limbs of our naked elm tree to shiver uncontrollably. Beside me was a tour book of Hawaii. The cover showed shimmering white sand, pristine blue water, and a graceful palm tree stretching toward the ocean as if offering its hand for the waves to kiss. Beautiful people from all over the world came to bask in the sun and stroll along such exotic beaches in this island paradise.

I glanced sympathetically at the quivering elm tree out my window and tried to imagine slender tropical palms in full sunlight, swaying in the breeze, green and full of life.

“That’s right. Think about the beautiful beaches, the sunshine, and all the fun you and Laurie are going to have.”

I blew my nose and glanced at the mirror.

She was still there, delivering her sugary sass.
“Don’t think of the other tourists—those twenty-year-old toothpicks in their bikinis, sauntering down the beach with their long, cellulite-free legs and their flat stomachs. Who cares that you’ll be the only woman on the beach looking like a bright blue Easter egg on parade?
”

I picked up a pillow, took aim, and …

The bedroom door swung open, forcing the mirror maven into hiding. My hero entered with a tube of caulking in his hand. “There you are. You okay?”

I clutched the pillow to my middle and nodded.

Darren glanced out the window and then down at the tour book beside me. “I heard this storm is supposed to blow over by Monday. Should be clear sailing when you fly out on Wednesday morning.”