When I returned home from having dinner with my husband at a restaurant the other night, I found my closest Nashville girlfriends gathered around the dining room table. At 47, I had never had a surprise birthday party before. (Unless you count the one at Camp DeSoto when I was about 12. Because I have only the dimmest memory of it, and one blurry photograph, I’m choosing not to.)

As I made my way through the back door of the house, I noticed candlelight. My stepdaughter had decorated the table with an old lace tablecloth that belonged to my mother and two crystal candlesticks her father and I had received as a wedding gift. There was cake—the puckery sweet, sugar-rose bedecked kind from childhood. And fruit tea, and gifts…all orchestrated by my husband.

Best of all, there were four women who mean a great deal to me. Women who have known me happy and sad, fatter and thinner, energetic and lazy, sure-footed and wobbly. They have known—and loved—me “for better or worse.” I have turned to these women in suffering and in celebration, and they have listened. I have called them early in the morning and late in the day, and they have answered.

So although I’m delighted to have the new jazz cd, the scented blue candle, and the monogrammed note-cards, I’m most grateful for the friendships. Some gifts never grow old.

Amy Lyles Wilson