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Main Street: Girlfriends of many generations a gift

| May 4, 2022 1:00 AM

Birthdays are usually a time for reflection, especially at this season of life. When I blow out the candles in 10 days, I will be 70 years old. To write it or to say it makes me laugh. I’m not sure I gave much thought to what 70 would be like, but I certainly imagined it would be older than this or at least different.

For over 30 years, I’ve been wishing people happy birthday in this column. It’s no secret that I love birthdays, even other peoples birthdays and that May is my favorite birthday month for obvious reasons.

Last week, I started celebrating early by inviting some women I admire who are also celebrating decade birthdays this year for lunch and cake at Dockside. It was my birthday gift to me, surrounding myself with friends born in 1972, 1962, 1942 and 1932. We had 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 years covered. The youngster of the group, Vicki Isackson, is my action/adventure friend. She’s fearless at 50, so I live vicariously through her all-season outings to mountain tops and dirt trails. She’s smart and funny, too. My longtime friend, Pam Houser, is 60 and even though a decade separates us chronologically and we have different parents, I’m pretty sure we’re twins. She’s smart and funny, too. Marlo Faulkner is turning 80 and is one of my arty, creative writer friends. She’s smart and funny, too. (Are you realizing the common denominator of my friends?)

And then there’s Jean Monahagn, who’s been 90 for a week. I’ve known Jean, or Mrs. Monahagn, the longest. We met in the 1960s when I was newly-arrived in Coeur d’Alene and she was my eighth-grade science teacher. Thankfully, she’s forgiven me for liking English more than science. And not surprisingly, she’s smart and funny as well.

So there we were, a group of women who have vastly different generational frames of reference but similar interests and community engagement just enjoying each other's company. To put the decades into perspective, Herbert Hoover was president when Jean was born, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House when Marlo came into the world. In the year of my birth, 1952, Harry Truman held the highest office in the land. In 1962, Pam’s birth year, the era of Camelot was in full swing with President John F. Kennedy. Richard Nixon was president in 1972, when Vicki was born.

After an irreverent observation by Marlo, Vicki remarked that she looked forward to being 80 so she could say things like that. I had to laugh when I told Vicki that I’d known Marlo for many years and her candor is definitely not age related. Jean, born four decades before the first mobile phone was invented, was wielding her smart phone like a tween, snapping photos. How cool is it that my eighth-grade teacher is a tech savvy nonagenarian, who texts and is also a Facebook friend!

I wish when I was in my twenties or thirties I’d been savvy enough to have cultivated friends from many generations, but at that stage of life we’re more likely to be surrounded by a tribe of peers of our own age.

None of us knows how many birthdays we’ll be blessed to celebrate, but the view from almost 70 is pretty sweet. I consider all of my future birthdays as a victory lap after previous decades of struggling, striving, loss and achievement. Each birthday I celebrate is my favorite birthday of all!

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After a two-year hiatus the Pleasantview Community Association’s Spring Cowboy Breakfast is back. For over four decades the group has held the breakfast at the historic Pleasantview School on West Riverview Drive to raise money for the ongoing preservation of the building. The big day is Saturday, May 7, 8-11 a.m., for biscuits, sausage gravy, scrambled eggs and my favorite honey butter and homemade jam for the biscuits. $10 per person (special family rate, too) and no charge to tour the school and ring the bell.

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Happy Main Street birthdays today to Kay Poland, Kenley Link, Jeanette Bangs, Garrett Brown, Scott Hayden, Rand Wichman, Brittany Smith and Scott Jacobson. Cinco de Mayo birthday wishes to Faith Brodwater, Robert Cliff, Ben Miller, Joni McCroury, Carol Toomy, Lisa Peterson, Teri Farr, Angela Erickson and Andy Fischbacher. On Friday Dusty Flamand, Tamatha Dougal, Kristi Pope, Connie Clark, Steve Eachon, Jeff Rhodes, Meagan Guerreo, Dave Tester, Jerry Shriner and Karen Ouren celebrate another year. Lisa Aitken (50!), Kris Phillips, Chris Moore (50!), Randy Williams, Ruby Johnson, Pete Shepperd, Kathie Brack, Rob Rinard, Jr., Rena Pruitt, Ramona Kaiser, David Dasher and Phil Pyseky blow out the candles on May 7. On Mother’s Day Olivia Backs, Chalee Atkinson, Matt Barkley, Stephie Clinton, Julie Adamchak, Tiffany Teal, Lindsey Sales, Nic Riorden and Jared Raynor have their cake and eat it, too. On Monday Colleen (Cokie) Hough, Allan Aitken, Tara Dagastine, Carrie Holdren, Valerie Emery, Bonnie Clark and Carla Noonan take another trip around the sun. Coltan and Cadan Virgil, Shelly Servick, Don Smock, Shelly Matthews, Pearl Bouchard, David Dickinson, Margie Adams, Zena Baltzell and Bonnie McDowell celebrate on Tuesday.

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Kerri Rankin Thoreson is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and the former publisher of the Post Falls Tribune. Main Street appears every Wednesday in The Press and Kerri can be contacted on Facebook or via email mainstreet@cdapress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kerrithoreson.