How one family shops, and bonds, on Black Friday

The cute high heels on sale at Macy's in Oakbrook Center are just waiting to fly off the shelves, but none of the women from the Drolet family pay much attention.

The five sisters who grew up in Arlington Heights and their 90-year-old mother should be pros at Black Friday shopping. They spent the day after Thanksgiving - just as they have for nearly 40 years - at the mall while the men in the family played cards back home.

But this, it turns out, was no shopping spree. This was precious bonding time.

"We all have a good sense of humor, and we can laugh about some of the mishaps that have happened in the past, frustrations sometimes about having to wait forever for somebody, but you know you get over it," one of the sisters, Dorothy Dirks, said. "Because this is more fun than holding grudges."

Black Friday tests the patience of any shopper. If you want a good bargain in stores, you're going to have to contend with crowded parking lots, impatient drivers and long lines.

But four generations of the Drolet clan - including babies in strollers - were in no rush Friday in Oak Brook. The dozen or so women even let a reporter who does her shopping online tag along.

"Ssssh! You guys are too loud," matriarch Joan Drolet tells her offspring in Macy's.

The day began about 8:30 a.m. at the store's shoe department. Most of the women already had celebrated Thanksgiving together, but they still treated the outing like a long-awaited reunion.

"Hey, beautiful!" one said.

They don't remember all the bargains they've found since their post-Thanksgiving ritual began about 38 years ago. And they don't call it Black Friday - just the "Day After."

But the siblings do swap stories of how their mom taught them to play piano and sew. They first had to practice stitching straight seams on notebook paper.

"Your dad would tell you that you could do better," Joan Drolet said of her late husband.

As her children raised their own, the shopping tradition started without the kids. When they were elementary school students, Colleen Mullaney, Megan Bowens-Pereiro and Kelley Mullaney had to take a "rigged" written test before earning the privilege to join their moms at the mall. Whine too much, and they lost points.

"We're still bitter about that," an adult Colleen Mullaney said with a smile.

All the Drolets now display the proper shopping etiquette, though one store in the past kicked them out for laughing too loudly.

"They can make friends anywhere," said Kate Zettle, a third-generation shopper who used to live in Naperville and now lives in Bentonville, Arkansas.

And so when they have lunch in a cafe in Neiman Marcus, the servers recognize them. And when they stop to take pictures outside an Apple store, an employee offers to snap a few.

They're usually so busy reminiscing they don't think about their husbands until "halfway through the day," said Renee Drolet-Mullaney, who lives in Cary and planned to return home after the stores closed.

Despite the generation gap, they all seem to click. Dirks thinks maybe it's because many in the group share a career. There are teachers and nurses, and Dirks is a retired assistant superintendent in Keeneyville Elementary District 20.

And then the St. Charles woman, with tears in her eyes, gave one more explanation.

"We love being with our mom," Dirks said. "Each of us brings our own special appreciation of mom to the table for what she's done."

They admire how Joan Drolet still plays piano during Mass every Sunday at Our Lady of the Wayside Church in Arlington Heights. Or that time she made a wedding dress with pearls for her daughter, Michele Bedo.

But above all else, Joan Drolet, mother of seven, grandmother of 20 and great-grandmother of 22, told them to put family first.

"There's nothing like big families," she said.

Especially on the Day After.