MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — On a late Thursday morning at Voula’s Good Eats in town, the coffee is flowing. So are the laughs.
The four women sitting at the booth talk and smile with the ease that can only come with knowing someone for years, passing around stories and memories as effortlessly as the cream and sugar.
When they try to pin down when they first started having lunch together, they use the ages that their children were at the time as a reference point — early teens, toddlers, after so-and-so was born. Those kids now have kids of their own.
The friends have been getting together, often for lunch, once a week for more than 35 years.
“You think we’d run out of something to say,” said Dorothy Carner of Lynnwood, receiving laughs from her friends.
Over lunch, it’s clear they haven’t.
Carner is joined at the table by Donna Lunak of Mountlake Terrace, Kathy Hagen of Edmonds and Carol Johnson of Everett.
The weekly meet-ups began in the mid-1970s when Carner started a Bible study for her neighbors, with help from Hagen. Soon, the weekly study became much more: a group of friends devoted to sharing their lives with one another.
“I had no idea what it would turn into,” Carner said.
Sharing their lives has included everything over the decades: watching kids grow up, the birth of grandkids, helping each other in emergencies, traveling together. They talk of having people to share in the joyful moments of their lives and knowing someone is praying for them when times are hard. They tell stories. They laugh a lot.
“We’re vulnerable to each other, and secure,” said Hagen. All the others agree, each noting at some point that the rest are like family to them now.
The group has changed in size over the years — some women have moved out of the area or gone back to work, bringing the number of lunchers down over time. Johnson began coming to lunch a few years after it began. Lunak has come to the daytime gatherings since retiring about five years ago, though she’s been friends with the others for years through church.
The four eating at Voula’s are the core group that still meets.
Though the lunchtime location changes between a number of spots in Snohomish County, they rarely miss a week.
“It’s one of the most valuable things in my life,” Johnson said. “I need these girls.”
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