September 18th is my dear friend, best friend’s birthday. I tend to miss it every year by a minute or two. I don’t normally miss birthdays except for the people I love most apparently; I tend to miss Kyle’s too. Though I miss their official birthdays I celebrate them and tell them as often as possible that I love them. So here they are on the Cape for Sandra’s birthday. I can’t screw it up this year.
Sandra is on Cape because of the accident she had back in January, you remember Whiteface had a thing or two (broken legs that is) to say about her lifestyle and slowed her way down. I drove up to be by her side and the conversations went everywhere as you could imagine they would after a near miss. What will life look like now? What should the goals be going forward? Well, one tiny little goal could be to celebrate your birthday on the Cape….just saying…might be nice…could work. What do you think? Fast forward and here we are.
The weather was supposed to be a bit iffy but the Cape being its own little ecosystem (read finicky as hell) it turned out to be a beautiful day. So let’s do the tourist thing and stroll around Chatham to shop and have a celebratory lunch. Off we go.
Kyle and I have a very strong fondness for Chatham. She found herself there after a traumatic event and scooped me up to bring me there after a traumatic event. We went each year for many years and it seemed that either she or I or neither of us had some kind of thing to work out. It was a salve for us and we looked forward to our time together there as only Summer Sisters could. I’m so glad she could work out being on the Cape this year after her bout with breast cancer, sometimes I just can’t get close enough to her to give her all the energy and love I have for her. But when we’re on Cape we know that we have enough love to pass back and forth to hold us for a while. She’s got adjustments to make and life and style changes of her own to work out but I have the utmost faith that she will arrive on the other side of this as only she can, with grace and determination to continue to make her way in the world. I’ve said it a million times, she is the smartest woman I know and I admire her more every time I see her.
Now we’ll bring Sandra there to poke around and shop and walk and eat and just be on the Cape toward making her new found life and style come together. It’s funny the things one thinks will put them on a new path. For Sandra it seemed to be about a more outward vision and so we found ourselves at the optical center in Chatham. Get it? Trying on glasses and imagining their effect not only on the people you’re planning to do business with but on your own reflection back from the mirror. Are they me, is this what I want to put out there? Do they convey what’s happened to me and what I’ve gained from it? Oh we found the perfect pair but we’ll come back later to be absolutely sure.
So what would take your mind off such a weighty decision, lunch of course. Sandra’s birthday, what would you like to eat. Lobster roll, well if you’re going to do the tourist thing you may as well eat like one…or maybe not. In the middle of Chatham is a place we passed on the way to the Squire named Celestino’s Café. We sized up the items on the menu board and dismissed it as too expensive for dinner. But lunch? The items on the lunch menu board looked beyond appetizing and quite reasonable so we took a chance. Imagine Dijon mussels, fresh salads with strawberries and goat cheese. Imagine grilled cheese taken to the next level by using brie and lobster. And thankfully a beautiful lobster roll for our birthday girl. And oh yeah a bottle of wine…chardonnay that was light and fruity enough even for me. Did I mention we topped it off with dessert, I mean three desserts, one more delicious than the next. Hours spent at a table over lunch is somehow much more decadent than going out for dinner. We were the ladies who lunch enjoying the food and each other’s company.
So now there is shopping to complete. We continued our way up Main Street poking in and out of stores and people watching and chatting all along the way. Back at the optical center and yes we’ll take those beautiful tortoise shell frames that are just big enough to make a statement and just classic enough to say I know a thing or two. Perfect.
Back on Willow we sit around happily with our books and our nibbles (because dinner is the furthest thing from our minds) in companionable silence until we just can’t keep our eyes open another minute. Happy Birthday my dear friend, the rest of your life and your wonderful style will be far reaching. Love you.