Groups:

All my life I have found groups to belong to, from Brownies to Bingo.

I became a Brownie in second grade, wearing my brown, starched uniform and my cute brown beanie and learning to recite the Brownie promise and to make the Brownie sign. I don’t remember what we did during our weekly meetings but we always ended by standing in a circle and singing Taps.

Later my friend’s mother organized a Girl Scout troop that met weekly at thier house. Now we had green uniforms and hats and needed three fingers for the Girl Scout sign. I was secretary of the troop and called everyone on Monday evenings to remind them of our Tuesday meetings. By junior high some girls had lost interest in scouts but a core group of about ten of us remained.  We had a wonderful Scout leader named Anne, who invited all of us to her wedding. 

Also In junior high, a group of seven girls met every Saturday afternoon.  We called ourselves Tri-S for Seven Saturday Sisters. We played board games, played outside, went to movies. We had fun.

In high school I belonged to a group called the Confederate Club It was the brainchild of Don H. who loved the Old South. Can you imagine a public school today allowing a group that paid homage to the Old South?  A close-knit bunch, we had our own special horn honk when we drove up to one another’s houses.  On Friday nights we went to football games together and afterwards rode around in Don’s station wagon.  If you were the first ones to get in, you could sit at the back with the rear door open and dangle your feet outside.  That, of course, was long before seat belts.  For the spring parade we built a float that displayed a huge mint julep.  I wore a red bathing suit and sat on the top.  I needed a ladder to get up there.  A Confederate flag flew from the station wagon antenna.    My sister likes to remind me of my membership in the Confederate Club.  She knows it makes me cringe, but it was great at the time.  We didn’t know any better.

In college I pledged Sigma Delta Tau sorority, founded by seven Cornell University students whose names we had to learn, but were easy to remember in order because their first initials spelled out DAMGIRLs. I was the chapter secretary my junior year. I loved my SDT friends. 

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After I graduated and got married, I joined the Emma Lazarus chapter of Houston Hadassah.  It was for young women and at age 35, you had to join another chapter. (By the time I reached that old age, I had left Hadassah behind and was pursuing my Master’s in speech pathology). But in the early days of marriage, my life had revolved around Emma Lazarus meetings and fund raisers.  One of my jobs was to be in charge of sales of Barton’s candy for Chanukah and the candy became so popular that the manager of the apartment complex we lived in would give me an empty apartment to store the candy shipments.  Lori, by then around 3 years old, liked to get out her toy telephone and say, “Hello, can you come to the ‘Dassah meeting?”  And yes, I served a stint as secretary to the chapter.

During my ‘Dassah days my husband and I lived at Braesfield apartments, 3822 North Braeswood.  That complex was demolished but in those days it was a chic place for young married couples with children, and there were lots of us.  The girls played bridge, went downtown for lunch at Foley’s or Sakowitz on Fridays when our maids came, took our children to the pool or for special dinners at a hamburger place in Westbury Square.  In the evenings when our husbands were home, we’d all gather in the courtyard, talk and laugh.  Eventually we bought our first homes and moved on.

When I gave up Hadassah for speech therapy, I hung out with other grad students and later when I worked at the Speech and Hearing Institute, with colleagues there. At lunch we watched Jeaopardy, we went to Texas Speech and Hearing conferences together and lobbyed  the Texas legislature for licensure for speech pathologists.  After I started a private practice, I became active in the Houston Association for Communication Disorders and the Texas Speech and Hearing Association.  One year  I was co-chair for TSHA’s Parents’ Night at the annual convention.  Our job was to schedule a speaker for the event.  We tried in vain to get Anne Glenn, wife of John Glenn.  Anne was a stutterer and we thought she’d be a big draw.  Unfortunately, she turned us down.  Later I was, of course, secretary of the Texas Speech and Hearing Foundation and those of us on the board became close friends.  We sponsored an awards dinner at the yearly TSHA convention and the year I was in charge, I also won the door prize.  I promise, the drawing was not a set-up. 

Even though my life revolved around my family—husband and three teenage children—I found time for a new interest and a new group. After reading a book called Wishcraft:  How to Get What You Really Want, I decided I really wanted to write a romance novel.  My first step was to join Romance Writers of America. I wondered somewhat nervously about the people I would meet. .  Would the members be silver-haired ladies nostalgic about their long ago love affairs, or perhaps glamorous middle aged women who wore silky negligees as they reclined on lounge chairs and dictated sexy stories to their secretaries?  Maybe they would be poverty-stricken young women who sat at their kitchen tables typing at old-fashioned typewriters in hopes of making the best seller list.  Since I fit none of those categories, I wondered if I could possibly fit in.  I found a group of average women, all of them unpublished but hoping for sales.  In time, I joined a critique group with five other aspiring romance writers.  We met every Friday night. 

After I became a member of a group I never wanted to join, The Society of the Recently Widowed, a chance purchase of a book about women transitioning to a new stage of life, brought me to TTN, The Transition Network.  What luck!  These were interesting women moving to new stages of life.  We met monthly, formed a discussion group called Death, Dying and Dessert to discuss end of life issues, and published an anthology titled Coping with Transition:  Men, Money, Motherhood and Magic.

  Another speical group is the Friends of Marilyn.  When our dear friend Marilyn moved to Portland, Oregon, four of us  drove her to the airport to say goodbye.  Now we meet each year on July 5, Marilyn’s birthday,, for a phone call or a Zoom meeting to catch up. 

I belong to other groups as well:  a monthly group of speech pathologists (Speech Ladies’ Lunch) a group that goes to dinner and InPrint readins together, a group of retired speech pathologists that celebrates one another’s birthdays, a canasta group, a bereavement group that became a lunch group that turned into a Mah Jongg group that formed a daily Zoom group that got us through the dark days of the pandemic.  And there’s the Bingo Bunch, about 20 Brazos Towers Residents that play high stakes Bingo ($1.25 a card) on Saturdays nights.   And, oh yes, a group of reisdents, one of whom is a film critic, is organizing a movie group, The Brazos Towers Movie Mob.  That should be fun.

And of course, there is our memoir group, who encourage one another to write about past experiences, hopes and dreams, tragedies and triumphs.  I look forward to our Tuesday meeetings.  We never know what gems will emerge.

Groups have inspired me, supported me, opened me to new ideas and experiences and enriched my life.  I’m  forever grateful that I found these friends.