Joe: Ladies, I hope you don’t mind me being here for this cookout. But John David has talked all week about Daniel and I wanted to meet this young man who seems to have brought my son out of his shell.

Daniel and John David had gone into the house to see John David’s room and the rest of the house.

Barbara:  John David has been rather a quiet child most of his school life. Daniel is the first person he has seemed to shown any interest in. And the fact that Daniel evidently is a math whiz and loves science has been just about all he has talked about.

Joe:  And when he mentioned that he plays golf too, well he became a must meet as far as I’m concerned.

Bette: Well, we are just now moving here from New York and this week is the first opportunity Daniel has had to meet people his own age and make friends.

Barbara: Tell us about yourselves. Are you two married?

Tina:  Yes, we are married. We are going to celebrate our 11^th anniversary in October. But we have actually been together with the exception of a couple of blips for almost 25 years. We have an older daughter, Angie who is a freshman/sophomore at Yale this year.

Joe:  Yale, that’s impressive. And what do you two do for a living?

Bette:  I have just started a position as a Professor of Fine Arts at UCLA. Tina has been in the film industry most of her professional life and I have been in the arts field all of my professional life.

The talk between the couples went on for a while and covered subjects of previous jobs, awards, both of their college degrees and schools. Joe and Barbara were nice people. Bette and Tina thought they were good together, but they were separated.

Joe started the hamburgers and Bette went to talk to him while he performed his chief duties. Joe confessed that he still was very much in love with Barbara but he had screwed his relationship with his wife and children up by paying more attention to his career than his family life. He was trying very hard to correct that aspect of his life and reunite with his family. He said that he and Barbara were technically separated and in the process of a divorced. But his wish was to stop those proceedings and for he and Barbara to try again. Bette could feel his pain and knew that she too had been through that some 12 years ago.