The Best Years of Our Lives

I'm utterly convinced that unless tragic attempts at hip dancing are involved, middle age is the best era of life, if you know how to work it. If you made good friends, tried to love somebody along the way, and survived great losses without losing your damn mind.

Actually, last night put the icing on the cake about that for me. The woman sitting awaiting her birthday cake is named Velvet, and she's in Nairobi visiting her friend and mine, Gwen. They just got back from a grand tour of Ethiopia, where Gwen was reporting a story about the Nile River for NPR. Tomorrow, they head to Egypt, for more reporting on that same story.

Velvet's birthday celebration has had several layers. She was actually here about 3 weeks ago, and got another present from our friend Susan...a baby blue burqa from Afghanistan. You'd have thought it was made of diamonds and gold foil the way Velvet raved!

Gwen and Velvet have known each other since their childhood in New Orleans, and you can tell by the way they interact there's a deep sisterhood bond. And I bet back then, when they we skipping rope or playing with dolls or doing some other kind of girly-kiddie stuff, they never in their wildest dreams imagined hanging out in the rock-hewn churches of Northern Ethiopia, or floating down the Nile.

But they made it. They survived the slings and arrows of outrageous adulthood, the loves lost, the children, the job stresses, the deaths, the emotional pain - you know, the bricks and mortar of life - and they can celebrate that victory at a birthday party in Nairobi.

Why not? After all, these are the best years of our lives.