A Gift for Emily

Our Book Group is comprised of women of all ages and runs the gamut of personalities from those who never say a word, to those who would just as soon run the show. Most of us are mothers, and quite a few of us are grandmothers. Book Group began as an offshoot of our swim team, which often met for coffee at Peet's across the street after our workouts. It has morphed and changed over the years, however, there is a core of a dozen women who still attend our pot luck dinner meetings. Two of us have moved away but still try to make it back to Berkeley for meetings.

We have done a lot together. My favorite was a fabulous 70th birthday celebration for Marcia at a rustic lodge on Mt Tamalpias. Everybody had to hike in from a large parking lot three miles away. One parking space by the lodge was allotted to us just long enough to drop off food and an elaborate chocolate ganache covered hazelnut birthday cake, which I made with the help of a couple of others. Everybody else dropped off their food contributions with one woman with a big car, and she drove the three of us us with our cake and all the food up the narrow mountain road to the West Ridge Lodge. She forgot her own contribution of the main course, apparently a chicken dish, but there was so much other wonderful food that nobody cared. Her husband must have enjoyed the main course!

When someone in the group is in need, there are always members willing to help. On a bicycle ride around Tiburon, I flew over my handlebars, knocked myself out and came around in a ditch with a fireman asking me if I knew what day it was. One woman rode with me in the ambulance, another took my bike home, and Marcia stayed with me for hours while they fixed my dislocated shoulder and treated me for concussion, and then drove me home.

This morning, three of us from Book Group went shopping for something pretty and practical for Emily, who is stuck in a rehab unit in Maine after a fall down some stairs in which she broke her neck and her collarbone. We don't have many details other than those, but we all contributed money for a lovely soft wool shawl and a close fitting beaded bracelet. It can't be easy to feel attractive if you are immobilized in a hospital bed far from home for three months, so we hope they will help.

We also learned the sobering news that Toni has just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and will have something called Whipple surgery at Stanford hospital on Monday. A group was immediately organized to take her meals when she gets home from the hospital. We passed the phone around the room last night and each one of us talked to her.

And yes, we did discuss the book, which I had to confess I hadn't read. But after listening to the discussion, I will read it. There are lots of reasons to belong to a Book Group like this, not all of them about books.