My new secret club

(I actually wrote this yesterday midday, but I'm trying to spread out the posting.)

I left home at 4:50 a.m.-ish, which was later than I'd hoped, but still, as it turned out, enough time for me to speed the Oldsmobile to the Manchester, NH, airport. And immediately, I started spotting women wearing the same jewelry I was wearing, the same jewelry I had in my bag, and the jewelry I had been dying to see in person but didn't own yet. Some of them were louder than others, making a big thing of it. I preferred the women like me, who smiled shyly in acknowledgment, but spoke only if we happened to be right next to each other in line. Manchester is not a large airport. It is, in fact, tiny, which is most of why it's desirable to me. And still, there were easily a dozen of us, heading from that airport to the lia sophia conference in Milwaukee.

I didn't sit with the other lia women on the plane.

And then, we got to Baltimore.

I am writing this on the plane from Baltimore to Milwaukee, and probably a quarter of my fellow passengers are fellow lia sophia advisors. That means there's more acknowledgment. At BWI, One woman rounded up as many of us as she could spot in lia sophia jewelry for a picture. I will be on some stranger's Facebook page tomorrow.

Seriously, it is like belonging to a gang with a secret sign. The closest I have ever come to vaguely bonding with so many strangers was when I was in Rotary (there's a story I should tell) and wore my lapel pin around. That would get me, usually, about one nod a day out of the thousands of strangers I'd walk past. I still have a Rotary credit card, and that sometimes gets me a "Really? You too?" from dinner companions I don't know well. But this? This quarter-planeful of new pals? This is brand new, and I'm barely out of Baltimore.