Listen...There Are Stories to Be Heard

There's a lot I could say about my big night out in the nation's capital tonight.  I could talk about my first solo Uber experience and how easy it was to get myself from my home in Alexandria to a meet-up with good friends in DC.

I could write about walking into bars that I drank in 25 years ago to find that the music hadn't changed that much but the crowds had thinned.

I could admit that I poked some fun at one older woman I met...how she was rather chatty for my taste.  The way I rolled my eyes at a friend when this same woman went on about this and that.

But then I sat in the back seat with the same women, who I didn't know all that well- the one my group offered a ride home to.  When we settled in the back seat and really started to talk- the way you talk when the noise of the bar and music has disappeared- I found out that she had recently lost her husband.  The night out that brought us all together was a meet up of people interested in the same thing- weather.  This woman, who told me about how her "couple friends" stopped talking to her for the most part after her husband died, had a wonderful night out.  She recalled how her grandparents loved weather.  That love of meteorology trickled down to her.  As our car whipped around Lafayette Park with the White House in the background we chatted about her life now- as a widow- and how her husband would have approved of her own big night out with new friends.

I felt a little guilty at first.  But then I sat back and listened to her talk some more...happy to hear her life story.

We all have a story to tell.