Fateful Girlfriend Meetings

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.