Today is Eleanor‘s birthday!

her birthday feels like a holiday worth celebrating!

Eleanor sends me more selfies than anyone else I know. She is beautiful inside and out, and also happens to be very good at taking selfies for a woman from her generation!

I have received several dozen selfies of Eleanor in the past almost 9 months since my mom passed away. Eleanor was my mom’s friend, and now that I am orphaned she prioritizes staying in touch with me on the regular.

Eleanor and my mom were neighbors, but then my mom moved to the nursing home, Covid took over our lives, and they loosely stayed in touch but had not seen each other much in my mom’s final years. The last time Eleanor and Carol saw each other was when Carol got her Covid vaccination at Publix in the spring of 2021. I let Eleanor know ahead of time that my mom was going to be there and Eleanor showed up to see her. It was a nice treat for my mom to see her friend!

When Eleanor first started texting after my mom passed I had no idea she would still be texting me almost a year later. I knew she and my mom liked each other, but I didn’t know how close she felt to my mom. Eleanor considered my mom a very dear friend! I know my mother cared for Eleanor, but my mother was not great at friendships. She was too focused on me and the girls (family) to value her friendships. My mom was also very shy and introverted by nature. Being social was not easy or comfortable for her. I don’t think Eleanor noticed, she loved her anyway.

Eleanor loved my mom and by extension, Eleanor loves me too. She misses her dear friend Carol, and I am her medicine for feeling less sad about my mom’s passing. It’s the things we have in common she likes to share with me, like the fact that she has a granddaughter named Natalie, one of her children shares a birthdate with me (2/22!), and she has twin great-grand babies.

Both Eleanor and my mom grew up in New York, and although they did not know each other in NY, they had decades of memories they liked to trade. The familiarity comforted them. If they were both living in South Florida there would’ve been a lot more New Yorkers in their building, but in Jacksonville they were the only two. Trailblazers if you will!

I reached out to Eleanor this morning to wish her a happy birthday! I’m certain I’ll be getting a selfie later coupled with a recap of her celebrations, she always sends both. She has a big and beautiful family and they are spoiling her today in Orlando, with a trip to her daughter’s sweet shop!

It’s a beautiful day for a birthday, the kind of day that makes it very hard to be inside! While I was writing this post my neighbor-friend Lisa and I were out enjoying a coffee on our shared pool deck, something we hope to be doing for decades, well into old age. I just told her about Eleanor and her birthday, and her friendship with my mom, and her texts. When I showed Lisa Eleanor’s picture she recognized her as the sweet lady from her church who is outgoing and passionate! She sits in the front row and squirts hand sanitizer into everyone’s palms on the way to communion. That sounds like Eleanor!

Eleanor loves her church, and I’m pretty sure she will be there tomorrow. I am going to go to church with Lisa tomorrow morning and surprise Eleanor with a belated birthday treat. That will feel good to my soul! 💐🎂🎈