EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN

Thursday evening I hosted a Summer Salad Supper potluck.  Lucky me, it RAINED so all the time I spent cleaning the deck and furniture and arranging things was for naught.  We ended up eating around the tiniest kitchen island ... not even the dining table (a bit bigger!)

We are the South Maui Merry Widows ... plus one.  I met Sharon at Starbucks many weeks ago when she asked a question about my iPhone.  Hers was pretty new to her so we chatted about making life so easy with just one device.  She is intrinsically beautiful ... almost ethereal.  Close to my age with long gorgeous grey hair.  Very soft spoken.  Anyway ... I wanted to say bye for now and we included her even though she is not a widow.

The food was fabulous (I made deviled eggs and lemonade) and we had Asian green salad, pasta salad, chicken salad, quinoa salad, Frog Eye salad (fabulous ... and I had NEVER heard of it ... look it up!), roasted cruciferous salad and more.  Better than all of that, we had conversation.

Since Julie and Sharon are new to this group, I asked each person to introduce themselves and their stories ... how they got to Maui, how long and how they became widows.  It turned into so much more.  Molestation.  True love.  Unhappy marriage.  Soulmate lives.  Rape.  Spousal abuse.  Aids. Fairytale courtships.  Accusation of murder for a SIDS death.  We laughed.  We cried (well, mostly I cried).  We bonded.

Who knew these ordinary ladies had extraordinary lives.  We are all survivors ... and this evening proved to me that we CAN move on.  From anything.