What Life Decided to Offer

"Sometimes it seems like everyone is speaking poetry," says Lori. "Fragments of poems hang in the air."

I know exactly what she means.

It's a beautiful Saturday and we are spending it together, a lovely and unlikely turn of events. The two of us have slipped out early from a presentation for teachers that was not what we'd expected, but we have to stay in town so I can pick up Monte, who has gone elsewhere by bicycle and will need a ride back home. After a brief stroll on the bluff near campus and through the strangely deserted streets of Isla Vista, we head over to the mall at the north end of town.

A mall? Yes, I find myself at a mall for the second time in two days, and with the least mall-like soul I can imagine. Lori's not a shopper, you see. I think of her as one who makes and grows things, who treads lightly, uses sparingly and recycles afterwards, who notices and appreciates without the constant urge to own.

She's yellow-haired and fair and young––about 35 and easily a decade younger in appearance––and seems like someone from the early 1970s, the natural, organic type who might have worked at the local food co-op. She makes jams from the berries that grow in her garden, gathers leaves for herbal teas, and showed up today with a gift of sweet pea flowers, freshly cut and placed in a tiny glass jar adorned with a raffia bow. She hikes and camps and has an affinity for the natural world. A mall is not her typical habitat.

But we poke around for a while, even wandering into a lingerie store that carries nylon negligees, rainbow palettes of panties, and variations of bra I've never imagined. And it's Santa Barbara, after all, where everything looks so pretty. Empty benches by a fountain wait for sitters in the sunlight, high end stores imply lives of luxury and ease despite an apparent paucity of customers, and the mountains in the distance rise in rose-hued haze.

As is often the case, this day has not followed the anticipated curriculum, but it opens onto a path of its own, and we're ambling along without agenda. We talk about choices and hopes, each of us from a different vantage point of age, and I contemplate the contests I recall between what one has and holds dear and what one inexplicably yearns for nonetheless.

I see now that while the yearning for other experiences and outcomes never entirely goes away, it does abate with time. It abates because we learn how much of life is compromise and trade-off and roads not taken or roads we didn't intend, and as we begin to see that time's inevitable intention is to run out on us, we become less likely to risk the real for maybe. Good enough is satisfactory. Good enough is good. And it's enough.

And if we veer off anyway to pursue some long-imagined aspect of our story, a dream of achievement or adventure that we're loathe to relinquish, we may well end up wondering what we've done, wishing that we hadn't. But it was probably essential. Parts of the journey must always be solo and portions will feel like mistakes and all of our explorations will bring us exactly where we are meant to be, even if it's to arrive where we started, as T.S. Eliot said, and to know the place for the first time.

I love the way Lori asks questions, and values the experiences of others, respecting and reflecting. She's a light-and-story catcher, and she listens to the hearts of people, which is why she hears their poems. It occurs to me that life, like a tumbler of dice, rolls out random friendships in front of us. These assume importance and often recede, but a few turn out to matter and stay constant. I hope that Lori's friendship is one that will remain with me.

And so that teacher workshop thing was not what I'd expected, but as always, I have learned (or re-learned) not what I thought the curriculum contained but what life decided to offer.

A few last refresher lessons and notes to myself:

It's not about the plan or the venue: it's the company that matters.

You can be friends with someone half your age, because it isn't about the years at all...it's about the spirit and sensibility.

On the other hand, when someone in her 30s pulls out a picture of her new baby, as someone at the workshop did this morning, resist the urge to say, "Oh, I want one!" (You're 61. It's creepy now.)

And it's a good idea to sit near the door.

Homework:

Listen for fragments of poetry. Transcribe and share.