Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Today my three long-time friends — Carol, Noreen, and Judi — met each other for the first time. Together the years I’ve known these women totals 120; yet, because each friend lives in a different part of the Midwest, this was their first meeting.

Carol and I met in sixth grade when we were both the new kids who came to the school in the middle of the year, when friendships had already been blooming since September. Noreen and I became friends in our early twenties, originally because the men we married were friends. But our relationship has long outlasted that of the men. Judi and I struggled through early marriage together, each of us being women who might have made a greater mark in the business world in another time or place. At one point, she and I even owned a graphics business together.

What these women have in common is that they are all smart, witty, capable, organized, honest, dependable, and sympathetic — not necessarily in that order. Yet, each is as unique as the proverbial grain of sand or scarlet sunset.

I am an only child. And while that statement makes obvious that I never had an older or younger sister to help with the transition to a new school or to motherhood, what it also means is that I’ve acquired three wonderful surrogate sisters along the way.