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SHARING A LIFE ©2002 Deborah Henson-Conant

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My best friend is a housewife. At least, well, that’s her cover. In fact, she’s a genius in the art of life. But let me give you some background:

My best friend and I met in music school, at U.C. Berkeley, and we started playing music together when we were in our early 20’s. The music was a ploy on my part. From the moment I saw her I wanted to be friends with her. I just didn’t know how to make friends, so eventually I came up with a ploy: I would ask her to join my band.

I didn’t have a band. The band would be me and her: harp and cello. We would call ourselves: Harp and Cello. It would be honest, if nothing else.

But before I tell you about my Grand Ploy and Celeste's and my adventures, I need to tell you about my car, because my car colored many of those adventures.


I got the car before it ever occurred to me to be a harpist and before I met Celeste. It was my dad's ex-car, a light-blue Volkswagen Beetle, and it ranked even higher than the red Schwinn he'd sent me when I turned 7. Vehicles were an indication of Trust. I planned to treat the car like a baby and return it to my Dad ten years later, a vintage cherry, thus proving how responsible and caring a daughter I was. It would be a way to turn around the abysmal track record I had with my Dad.

However, a week after I got the car, my boyfriend totaled it in a traffic accident. He had dropped me off at the bus station to go visit my grandmother ...and then totaled my car. He ran a red light, destroyed my only means of transportation and obliterated my relationship with my Dad.

End of car. Right? “Totalled” means totally useless, gonzo, kaput. Right? Wrong. As it turns out, a totaled VW isn't necessarily an unreliable form of transportation. OK, so the front bumper and the lights were gone and the "hood" was smashed in like a jack-o-lantern in December -- the ENGINE still worked fine.

So I got my local mechanics to mount a set of free-standing headlights on top of the wheel housings, and we rigged up a wooden bumper. Then I bought a can of Rustoleum and painted the car a deep, forest green. It looked classy in a demolished-sort of way.



Next: "But Suddenly That Changed"