Still Lucky (Just Not Rich)

Three of the luckiest things that ever happened to me, and me.

Every year this is almost too hard to do.

The four of us have managed to pull off this annual get-together for almost a decade now, but the coordination of hectic schedules is almost too hard to do. We live in four different states, four different time zones, four different realities that have little in common. Two are retired, two of us still work full-time, each of us has dozens and dozens of other responsibilities pulling at our weekends.

There have been years--and this was one--when I almost said I couldn't make it. Those other responsibilities were swirling around my ankles and threatening to pull me down.

But somehow we've made it happen, and when it does, we remember why we've been best friends since  junior high: We've just been lucky.

This year we met in a Kansas castle, a tiny stone building that had been built as a filling station in 1926 and converted to a beautifully efficient lodge in 2012. It was the perfect location: With the entire building just for us and the thick limestone walls, no one was bothered by our late-night laughter.

Because even though we've known each other for going on half a century (and some of us longer than that), there is always something to talk and laugh about. Our roles in the sandwich generation that places us squarely between our grown-up children and our aging parents. Our jobs or our retirements (and the ever-so-slight jealousy between those two states). We press each other for pictures of the grandbaby, the almost-daughter-in-law, the just-completed landscaping.

Always, always, always we remember how lucky we are to have found friends like these because there are some people who don't have this kind of a relationship for even five minutes in their lifetimes and we've had each other for so many years.

We've gotten in the habit of buying a lottery ticket just before dinner Saturday night. Wouldn't that be a hoot, to win $317 million and split it four ways? We talk about what we'll do with the money--"A cook! A housekeeper! A cook AND a housekeeper!" We talk about risks we're willing to take (for the record: skydiving, yes; bungee jumping, no) and places we would go if we won the money.

Sunday morning we wake up, check the lottery numbers, and laugh because every single time we actually think we will have won because we're so lucky to be able to do this every year we assume that luck will rub off on the Powerball drawing. It doesn't, of course, but as we hug and get back in our cars to go back to our separate states and time zones, we're not really disappointed.

We know we're so lucky. We're just not rich.