No Matter What You Think, I've Always Loved You

"I've always loved you," he slurred into his cell phone, over and over. "No matter what you think, I've always loved you."

We were on the train––the Pacific Surfliner, to be precise––heading north. It was barely 8 a.m and several passengers were dozing, but the fellow on the cell phone was proclaiming his love at stadium volume. I suppose the object of his affection was pretty much over him at this point, but I didn't think he was helping his case by coming across as inebriated while most folks were still on their first cup of coffee.

As for me, I'll take a love letter, even an email, over a drunken phone call anytime. But you never know. Maybe someone would find this passion exciting. Here was a man unrestrained by conventions of the clock or proximity to strangers.

And who am I to judge? I looked down at a cardboard container of cold leftover pasta I had saved from a restaurant dinner the night before––very spicy, by most standards a peculiar breakfast choice. Even I had to admit it had lost a lot of its appeal, but I ate it anyway.

Tastes and customs vary, I was thinking to myself, but we are more alike than different. That was the theme of Maya Angelou's talk at the Arlington Friday night. I had gone with friends to see her, and I still had a residue of rainbow in my head.  At one point she quoted Terence: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. Or, to put it in English, as she finally did, "I am human; I consider nothing human alien to me."

So there you go.

Yes, I have seen Maya Angelou. Imagine that? It's like having been to a famous mountain, or a river of tales. She sat on the stage in a red dress and red shoes, looking like the majestic elder of our tribe, and she said, "I wish I could lean over each of you, turn your head, and blow into your ear everything I know."  

Oh, I wish she could too. But she's done her best.

Two days later and here I was on the Pacific Surfliner heading home after a Saturday in a coastal town with an old friend (more about that in a moment) and I figured I'd follow up my pasta with some coffee, so I walked back to the dining car to buy a cup and decided to drink it right there. I just liked the ambiance, I guess. It was stark in a way, with its white formica tables and blue vinyl seats, but also comforting and diner-esque.

Maybe it was those vintage looking posters, art deco style prints of trains going past desert and skyscraper, with names like Lake Shore Limited and Southwest Chief, not to mention my personal favorite...the Coast Starlight. Maybe it was the blur beyond the windows on either side, the back lots and buildings, the stations and scenery, the vague sprawl of cities behind and before us.

Or maybe it was the familiar "ordinary people" feeling of it that I liked. A black man in a yellow shirt was staring out the window, and at a table in front of me a middle-aged white guy sat doing office work, with a banged up laptop in front of him and a folder full of print-outs at his elbow. A young blonde woman with a ring in her nose came in carrying a gorgeous round-faced baby in a sling at her chest.

And two conductors were having a conversation. One of them was saying, "That's your best friend, I sez to him, your best friend! Is that how you treat your best friend?"

"Man, the guy's cheap," said the other.

Then a third conductor came by and said, "Hey, watch your stuff out there. Some creep walked off with my hat the other day."

And everything smelled like coffee and rain, by which I mean there was a cozy feeling. Some would say the day was gloomy, with its overcast sky, almost opaque, as white-gray as an old handkerchief, but I liked it.

To get back to the reason for my trip, I had gone to see a friend of mine whom I have known for forty years. I would like to call her by name here, but I don't want  friends to worry that they might end up in a blog post if they spend too much time with me, so I am giving her an invented name: let's say Dee.

Dee and I were living in Chicago when we met, but we have spent time together in many geographies over the years, and even when we have been apart, we've kept each other posted on our stories. Dee had a long career as a social worker, and she is the single parent of an adopted girl from Russia, who is now thirteen. Parenting solo is never easy, but Dee's daughter has some serious challenges and special needs, and I wonder sometimes if Dee has ever wished she had not taken this on, but one of the things I admire and respect about Dee is that she never expresses regret or bitterness, never blames anyone else for her problems, and navigates through with patience and love. She focuses on the joy that her daughter has brought to her, not the difficulty.

Sadly, my friend Dee is one of the victims of this tough economy about which we have all been fretting. She lost her job and she can't find another. So not only is she the single mother of a special needs child, she is broke, unemployed, and no longer has health insurance. She is taking classes to try to re-train and become credentialed for some other type of work, but she also happens to be 61 years old, not exactly prime time.

But when I saw Dee walking towards me at the train station by the San Clemente pier, I chuckled to myself, because her spirit was conspicuously intact and her appearance so charming and familiar. She has an impressive mass of long, blonde-gray hair, a youthful figure, and her own quirky approach to fashion. I would describe her style as a blend of Stevie Nicks, 1969 hippie, bargain basement, and thrift shop eclectic. For our little reunion she was wearing a flowing skirt with a subtle camouflage print, a patterned tank top with some other layers, and ankle high boots that were a little like tan construction-worker boots, except that these had little pointy high heels.

And that's Dee. Somehow the overall effect was adorable. "Most people never really grow up," said Maya Angelou once. "Our real selves are still innocent and shy as magnolias..." I could always see that childlike innocence in Dee, that shy sense of wonder.

She's smoking again––stress––but instead of smoking frequently, she savors a skinny little cigarillo, and I will never forget the sight of her in the evening, dancing around on the sidewalk when a strand of an old Steely Dan song drifted from a doorway, that little cigar between her fingers, a bright full moon in the sky, her daughter cringing (as I know mine would have) but Dee just dancing like a little girl.

When the taxi didn't show up to take me to the station at San Juan Capistrano the next morning, Dee came down in her pajamas and robe and drove me there. And as we stood on the platform waiting for the train, the bells of the mission began to clang joyously.

“Oh, Cyn," she said, "do you realize how amazing your life is?"

"I do," I said, "but it's more luck than anything."

"No," she told me graciously, "you made decisions, and you were brave."

Sometimes it takes a friend, an old friend, to help us see the big picture, to validate our origins and trajectory, to offer continuity, to have borne witness. Oh, I still think that where we are is a matter of luck as much as anything, but I'm willing to concede the significance of choices, persistence, and attitude.

Then the train arrived, as trains eventually do, and Dee, who knew me during some of the hardest partings of my life, understands how I am about good-byes. So we hugged and I walked away briskly.

I found a seat and saw her through the window, in her pajamas, waving.

"I've always loved you," the guy with the cell phone was saying, over and over. "No matter what you think, I've always loved you."

Through forty years and distances, I have always loved you.  I was thinking that about my old friend Dee.And I was thinking that I was now a woman who had seen Maya Angelou, and some of her wisdom had found its way to my heart, and wherever I was I somehow belonged, and nothing human felt alien to me. I have learned, as she once said, that I still have a lot to learn, but I was feeling grateful and humble, human and connected.