We meet every six weeks or so at La Trattoria, an Italian restaurant in the West End of Gloucester. We're the girls from the Gloucester High School class of 63. We're "Glosta" kids, born and raised here, some returning after being away for a number of years, some home on vacation and some who have never left, but all with roots deeply embedded in this fish town we call home.
The food is good here, albeit somewhat messy, so we adorn ourselves with bibs — bright red calico bibs with blue, green and yellow trim, hand-sewn by classmate Bonnie's mom Ida Elizabeth (Betty) Steele as a Christmas gift to her adult children some 25 years ago.
She called them pasta bibs and Bonnie brings them to every meeting and hands are raised when she ask "Who wants a bib?" Unashamed and uninhibited, we happily cover our business suits, favorite blouses and work clothes, acutely aware of, but paying no attention to the stares of other patrons. We have dubbed ourselves "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Bibs"
Bonnie's mom is gone now, as are many of our moms, but we are cognizant of the fact that our mothers knew each other, were either friends, co-workers or PTA volunteers together at some time in their lives and so, we forge ahead, renewing old friendships and bridging new ones based on who we were then and who we have now become.
We've done well as a class really. We are business women and Realtors, doctors and nurses, novelists and writers, insurers and bankers, clinical, clerical and social workers. We're organizers and activists, municipal workers and of course moms and grandmothers. We are busier now than ever holding up our part of the bargain to the society we have created, yet we find the time to do this, to meet, share a meal and to record news of and yes, at times, deaths of former classmates in an effort to preserve our history.
Arthritis has settled in. We have the usual collection of aches and pains and diseases. Several of us lost our battles with cancer and met untimely and premature deaths. We remember them and take time to recall what we shared with them, some stories funny, some poignant. One memory provokes another and we are not afraid to share.
Recently Ida recalled that we had to spend at least 25 cents (the cost of two cups of coffee) to get a booth at Tic-Toc's donut shop, next to Nick's famous pool hall, which we all had to pass, with dread, at one time or another. We all remember when Destino's Sub Shop opened.
We knew boys who went to Vietnam and died there. We remember the Cuban crisis, American Bandstand and Beach Blanket Bingo. We've treaded life's waves much the same way we treaded the waves at Good Harbor, with caution and at times, apprehension, sometimes fearful and other times fearless.
Most of us have learned to accept, with humor and grace, the limitations of our aging. We have managed to keep what was good and discarded that which is no longer useful. We continue to do practical things on ordinary days while getting along the best that we can.
We're enjoying each other and this renewal of friendship which was started some 50 years ago and hope that we can continue to morph into better versions of ourselves and that these renewed friendships remain as strong and as time-tested as the fabric in Betty's bibs.
If you are a woman who was part of the class of '63, please join us. Call or visit Janice Lufkin Shea at the Cormorant Shop on Main St .or call 978-281-9533 and leave your e-mail address or telephone number with her. We look forward to seeing you again.
Lee DiMaria Swekla is a Gloucester residents and a member of the Gloucester High School Class of 1963.
