Established in honor of the women who believed that growing older should never mean losing your dignity, your independence, or your right to belong.
Mom had written those words.
Mrs. Wilson had insisted on the final sentence.
I looked at the sign.
Then at the enormous oak tree beyond it.
I remembered being little and running beneath those branches.
I remembered Mrs. Wilson bringing lemonade to neighborhood picnics.
I remembered Mom pushing me on an old wooden swing.
All those years, I had believed the women were simply friends.
Now I knew that their lives were connected in ways none of us had fully understood.
And that one of those connections had given me an entirely new family history.
After the opening ceremony, Mrs. Wilson asked me to walk with her.
She was eighty-one now.
Her hair was a beautiful shade of silver, and she moved more slowly than she once had.
