Summer night with women

That's where we sat, four women friends up on the roof at twilight, sipping sparkling water and wine on a sweltering summer evening, our faces held up to catch the whisper of a breeze, the evening sky putting on a lightening show. There was thunder in the distance but no rain came, and so we sat, one of us recently returned from South Africa, London and Berlin, sharing her stories, and the four of us talking about our lives, about changing jobs after fifty, how complicated that is, about marriage and aging and glorious misspent youth, and about our children, who are newly employed, or traveling the world, or contemplating getting engaged, and all of us just exhaling, cares set down for the moment, free to be.