As I mentioned in my first excerpt, Between Friends tells the story of six close friends who share their tales of an event or person who changed their life in a meaningful way. This excerpt is an introduction to the characters. I hope you enjoy it.
Excerpt from Between Friends Chapter 3:
“I arrived at the restaurant just as everyone else was arriving. Debbie saw us from the parking lot and started singing, “Oh, yes, its ladies’ night, And the feeling’s right.” We all laughed at her excitement.
Karen shouted, “Come on Kool and the Gang; the stage is awaiting your presence.”
We walked in together, got escorted to our special section, sat down, and began what we love to do most – talk, talk, talk. As I looked around the table at my beautiful friends, I thought about all the stories each of us owned and told through our everyday lives. We were like an interconnected series of novels, a grand library of experiences.
Across the table from me sat Susan and Debbie. Susan, the poster child of health, is an editor/owner of a small publishing company that focuses on all issues health related – food, exercise, supplements, meditation; you name it. She is married to Matthew and has two adorable children, a daughter in college and a son in high school. Susan is the newest edition of our group, who constantly tries to motivate and inspire us to take care of ourselves; sometimes we listen, and it works. She loves to take us to different health events to test the products. I guess we are like guinea pigs in her health experiments, but we usually don’t mind.
Debbie is married to Scott and has three beautiful children, one in college and two in high school. She’s a full-time mother who is full of life and energy. We’re always amazed by all she does with her volunteer and charity work. Debbie has a refreshing curiosity and playfulness that reminds us of our youth. And she’s a hopeless romantic; books, movies, songs – anything romantic in nature. We enjoy kidding her about it, but to be honest we’re a bit envious of her optimistic outlook on life.
Sitting on either side of me were Karen and Julia. Karen, an executive for a marketing firm, is single with no children and reminds us constantly that her life is exactly the way she wants it. A bit cynical at times, she tends to hold everyone at a distance, even us her closest friends. She has this ‘I don’t need anyone’ persona, but she’s a softy inside. The problem is finding a way to crack the shell to get to the soft part. Karen is a bit pessimistic in nature, which she completely denies. She contends she’s not a pessimist but a realist – that she doesn’t have a negative outlook on life but a realistic one.
On the other side of me was Julia, who is a law professor and a mother of an amazing son in high school. A rational, goal-oriented person, Julia comes from an ambitious successful family of lawyers, which she seems to have inherited. She likes to see herself as grounded, in control and strategic in her decision making. However, her past two marriages to Richard and Robert have caused her to recently question this view of herself and her goals in life.
Between Debbie and Karen sat an empty chair filled with our purses. This chair acted not only as a holding place for our possessions but also symbolically for our dear friend, Alyssa, who moved to London two years ago with her husband. She’s the youngest of our group with no children. She’s also a creative visionary and artist who owns an art gallery featuring works of various painters, sculptors, and photographers. Even though far away in distance, she continues to play a major role in our lives, and we wait for her to return one day to complete our circle.
Oh, and finally there’s me, Diane. What can I say about myself? I’m married to a wonderful man, Daniel, and have two incredible children who are in college and high school. I am a therapist who owns a private practice (and possibly an aspiring writer). The others would probably describe me as the mother of the group, which may have to do with me being several years older than them. Not sure if that’s a compliment or not. As a storyteller, I enjoy listening to and observing others who tell their stories through their words and actions. I believe everything and everyone around us create one huge interactive story of life.
Each woman in our group represents fragments of each other – shared selves – and in some ways, we come together to form a sense of wholeness – a family. We are all like novels with our own special stories to tell.”
I hope you enjoyed this short extract from Between Friends. Check in again soon as I share more excerpts, and to see what other projects I am working on these days.
With Love and Light,
Denise