One
day three girlfriends left work for a nice lunch at a charming little
restaurant. They were full of news. One brought pictures of a recent
family wedding. Another, who had gone through a painful divorce, brought
pictures of her daughter's graduation and talked of how she and her
ex-husband had bought their daughter a car and were spending lots of
happy times together as a family. The third had the best news of all.
She was leaving her job and her family home with her two children to
have a beautiful wedding and move to a brand new house they were
building in New Orleans. There was a bit of happy competition in that
lunch. A few short weeks later, the first friend lost her son in a
tragic death. The second friend discovered her ex had met someone new
and was to be remarried. I've always wondered how things turned out for
the third friend.
Many
years ago, two friends met at the local Dairy Queen. One friend had
left college to go to beauty school. She was engaged to a boy in Viet
Nam but had fallen madly in love with her neighbor in a guilty summer
romance while he was home from college. The other friend was madly in
love, too, and was vowing to marry the boy she loved in spite of her
parents' disapproval. Those friends met again online after more than 40
years and the thing they both remembered and wondered about was that
last meeting at the Dairy Queen.
Three
childhood friends got together a year or so ago and compared notes. One
was a single mom with two little children and was about to be married
to her new love, one was about to have her first baby but was not
getting married. The third was in love, too, and living in her adopted
country of Chile. She returned to Chile just in time for a terrible
earthquake but her worried friends were finally able to find out she was
OK through Facebook. Time will determine the fate of the other two
friends.
It
is fun to get together with friends and talk of your plans, but
remember these fateful meetings. Life has a way of surprising us.