Getting to Know You - Again

As I said at some point earlier, the main thread of this trip for me was to get to know the other girls (women now, but always girls to me).

 And in this respect I made progress. I wish I'd known them all better in high school but later is better than never. And here they are, from left to right: Diana, Ann, Elly and Cecile.
Diana is the artist - very creative, able to put together exciting combinations, whether they be food, fabric or a canvass. Diana is very outgoing and attracts attention in whatever she does.
Ann is quiet and thoughtful, but with a wonderful sense of humor. She is a humanitarian to the nth degree and is well known around Santa Fe, which we discovered as we walked around town and every other person we ran into seemed to know her. She is a great hostess,, letting her guests go their own way or going with them if she and they want that. She opened her home to four of us and would have had more if they could come, yet she let us do our own thing in her home and was very relaxed the whole time. Don't think I could be that laid back.
Elly is also a humanitarian. In fact, in the year just after college, Ann and Elly traveled around the world together to places young women rarely went to in those days. Elly is the most analytical of the group, looking at everything from all directions. She is unquestionably the thread that held this group together because she has always kept track of and cared about all her friends. Without her, we would never have had this trip or at least it would have been made up of other people. But Elly is also a worrier and second guesses herself too much, causing herself great pain I think.  Although she has a great sense of humor.
One night she backed the car up and ended up with the  rear tire hanging over the edge of a rock wall. We had to call AAA to get it hauled back onto the driveway. The next day she bought a card with a picture of a truck in a tree and made copies of it for all of us as a memento!
Elly and I met in junior high and were close friends for the next six years. We've stayed in touch through the years since then but while she's stayed in touch with many of our classmates, I've let most of those friendships slip, which is why Elly was my entree to this trip.

Cecile revealed more of herself with each day and by the end of the week had us all helping her with a secret assignment. She won my respect because while she had a real estate deal going back home, which an associate was handling for her, she was able to refrain from either talking to or emailing her associate to find out how the deal was going. I think I would have bitten off 10 fingernails, maybe even the fingers with them and been checking emails constantly. Cecile is a striking woman, with the kind of high cheekbones we all covet and a real sense of style.
Okay, so that's the group. But there was one other  member I haven't mentioned: a male named Monty. We were all in love with Monty!