Thursday, June 5, 2008

Morton Arboretum with Christina today!

The last time I went to Morton with my dear friend was the summer I was pregnant with Mia. Christina, Serena and Sally and I called ourselves the Ladies who Lunch, and we had started getting together to visit obscure gardening centers and talk art and food and health bugaboos and other fun stuff.

This time we dragged our partners along. We packed a huge picnic. Brent wrote "Fuck Trees" in the dust on the bumper of Sally and Erik's car. We had a high school flashback when a rent-a-cop busted us for playing badminton.

"This is a tree museum, you know." His uniform was spotless. "You wouldn't play badminton in the Art Institute. You got beer in that cooler?"

We laughed hysterically later at our shifty-eyed silence to his question that only Serena had the sangfroid to break with enthusiastic denials. He checked it anyway, but I guess missed the bottles behind the lemonade.

Serena and Brent moved to Todos, Sally and Erik to Michigan. Randy and I had our baby, moved to Wilmette and had another. I didn't know then that our afternoon at the Morton would be the only one like it.

1 comment:

Susan Bearman said...

Seems like we never know at the time how singular and precious a given moment will be. My youngest son and I have made a pledge that we will take a long walk with our puppy, Hazel, every day. We've gone three for four days this week and I'm trying to enjoy every moment.