Spa Ya Sisters’ retreat

Once upon a time, three friends found a way to make weekly Weight Watchers’ meetings more fun.

Cheryl, Kathy and Charlene would meet each Saturday morning at 8 to attend Walter’s group session.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got,” he would say each time he ended the hour-long motivational session.

The three of us would then head to a nearby breakfast eatery and order up enough calories to tip the scales for the day.

During our weekly meetups, we decided to make this time an investment for our future, well, spa treatment future. We all chipped in $5 each week so that in six months’ time we would have enough to enjoy a deluxe facial or body massage. We booked our first getaway to the condo in New Hampshire that I inherited through my latest relationship. The three of us headed north to the White Mountains, where Champagne and Boursin cheese was unpacked and ready to share before heading to the Loon Mountain Spa for our treatments. Cheryl would get the hot stone massage, while Kathy got a Swedish massage; I signed up for a deluxe facial. We called ourselves the Spa Ya Sisters and after each treatment, we would laugh and enjoy good food, dance to Mustang Sally at the town bar, sleep late, enjoy a country breakfast, go for a hike in the woods, and then head on home until our next excursion.

Nothing lasts forever, and after my breakup, I lost access to the condo, we stopped going to Weight Watchers, and we enjoyed one last Spa Ya Sisters retreat during the weekend before Andrew moved out. My Sisters slept over my house and we had spa treatments in my hometown, then dinner and a night of dancing at a local Italian restaurant and bar. The next day, they packed up and left me to realize yet another devastation of my life.