The story thus far.
- Chapter One -
Consider this, a woman of average height finds herself at one of life’s unexpected, out-of-the-blue type crossroads. For the purposes of this story, dear and gentle reader, let’s call this woman, Jennine Heymer, or Jennine, for short.
For many decades, Jennine had worked in the film and TV industry. She cut her teeth coordinating film crews on feature films and production managing TV commercials. Over the decades Jennine’s focus changed and she began to hone her writing and directing skills to a level where her work started to win awards. WTF? Believe you me, nobody was as shocked as she. Despite this, Jennine knew full well the film industry to be a rollercoaster of ups and downs, twists and turns, feast or famine. Not wanting to exit the ride completely she needed to find something to help fill her proverbial ‘career’ cup.
“It must be meaningful and joyous,” was what she told herself. Just what the ‘it’ was, she had no inkling of.
Anyhoo, there stood Jennine, accompanied by her three dogs, at said metaphorical crossroads. Wait. We didn’t establish the dogs in our opening scene. Consider them a bonus.
“I have a feeling Google Maps knows ‘jack shit’ of our whereabouts,” she remarked to her triumvirate of four-legged companions, “I guess we’ll just have to wait to see what comes our way.”
Cut to, as they say in the movies, a few weeks on and Jennine finds herself, no maps needed, at dinner with friends. Let’s call them Friend A and Friend B. The evening was one of those laden with delight, pinot noir and supplemented in the aftermath by paracetamol.
As the pinot flowed, so did the conversation which led them, as it always did, to the old adage of ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Everything from Bunnings nursery hand to meerkat handler to installer of sushi trains was on the table.
“I just don’t know what I would do in real life.” Jennine mused.
“You’re good with words and people,” Friend A ever-so-slightly slurred in Jennine’s general direction, “You’d make a great wedding celebrant.”
“Can you imagine?” Jennine chortled, softly.
“I know,” Friend B delicately added, “You’d have to learn to brush your hair properly.”
Well, didn’t they all laugh at that?
Like most epiphanies, hers came to her in the hush cushioned between night’s end and morning’s beginning. It induced a sharp intake of breath which she held in a state of limbo before exhaling, slowly.
“Me, a wedding celebrant? But, what would that even look like?” she asked herself.
After some furious online searching, all supervised by her three dogs, a conclusion was reached.
“It looks like joy.” she declared.
The three dogs, of course, all agreed.
NOT [THE END] BUT THE BEGINNING