Sunday Scribblings: Fellow Travellers

I think first of those who are on my day-to-day path, the friends and colleagues who know when I've got a cold, who check in how I'm feeling at vulnerable moments; those who have gathered up the details of my family - who's not well, who I'm concerned about. These people - they pick up my satchel and carry it a way, they reach out so that I'm sheltered by their umbrella as we walk along. They find a sweet in a pocket and offer it. Hum a tune that will carry us a little farther along the road. They share details of their lives, and we pass words - memories and hopes - back and forth as we travel. This is my tribe, these people are my kith.

Our steps are not always synchronised. Some drift onto other paths, and we call out a Hello! that is heard faintly from time to time. But we do not forget one another, and when we find ourselves again on the same stretch of pavement for a time, we meet with gladness, and pick up the threads of our conversation again.

And then there are those met just once along the way. Brief times of connection with another soul. There are two whose memory warms my heart particularly.

J... my sister and I shared 3 seats together with her on our flight home from Lanzarote, a few years ago - winter 2004. She noticed that my sister was reading Ulysses, and was impressed. We counted the number of failed attempts we'd all made between us. (Reminder: Check with A whether she actually finished it that time!) We compared notes on the holidays we'd had. We two on a typical tourist visit, taking in everything and everywhere associated with Cesar Manrique, swimming, reading, eating too well. She'd been on a yoga holiday, and it had had its challenges for her. We clicked. Found we had more interests than books in common. We shared email addresses, and she and I have been in touch occasionally since then. She has health difficulties, and she runs writing workshops. Last year, she shared one of my poems with a class, and I had an email from one of her students thanking me for the inspiration for her own poem. I think of J far more often than I contact her. She was one of the fellow-travellers I feel blessed to have encountered. We could meet again. Sometime, I hope we will.

And then there was K... I'm sitting at Shannon Airport, May 2006, in the departure lounge. Nearby, a woman is smoothing and folding some silk scarves, checking whether she's accidentally splashed them with water. Our eyes meet. "They're beautiful" I say, and she immediately turns to me: "Aren't they? I couldn't resist buying them as gifts to bring home..." She's been touring ancient sites in the West of Ireland with the wonderful spiritual writer, John O'Donoghue, (who died quite recently, and is remembered by many, including Cate, HERE). So began a conversation that was to continue through our wait at the airport, and later on the flight to New York - which was only half-full, and where we could choose to sit wherever we wanted. Our interests too dovetailed in strange, synchronous ways. We had taken workshops on either side of the Atlantic with the same wonderful Poetry Therapy teacher. When she heard the purpose of my first visit to the States - to attend SoulCollage(R) facilitator training - she had heard of it. She had the book. As we talked, we discovered that our personal lives had parallel experiences, and we found we were both travelling along the path of single life after the end of our marriages. I shared secrets that no-one else in my life has heard. We laughed. I learnt something of her spiritual journey, she of mine. When we parted, each to take different connecting flights to different parts of the west coast, I knew I had met someone who would be in my life for a long time.

Our contacts are sporadic, but just as with J, there was a feeling when we met that left me knowing we two were meant to meet at that time and in that place, and that we would always be connected, in some ways - as fellow travellers along the road of life.

Confirmation of that: Last year, I return to California for a SoulCollage conference. When I turn to the participant on my right during introductions, she tells me what city she's from. "Oh... I've only ever met one person from there" I say, "... her name was K..." They know one another! Friends! It's a small world, and in it, aren't we blessed when along our paths we meet such fellow travellers? I know that I am.

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[And note...I haven't even touched on or mentioned my feelings about the fellow travellers I meet day by day here in Blogland and just how much so many of you mean to me, because I did just recently, on my 2nd Blogiversary post. You know I love you! ]

For more Sunday Scribblings on Fellow Travellers, go look HERE.

Bits of Thursday

Today (or yesterday, since midnight has now passed) was a good day: A day when I spend time with my son is a good day. A day where we travel together and eat together is even better. We had lunch, then went to visit his aunt, and then I took him to the train, as he heads back into his life in Dublin. As we drove, we spoke of his memories of childhood Christmasses. I realised that my memories were reinforced throughout my childhood in the conversations my siblings and I would have about Christmas... "Remember the time... What about the gift you got..." Being an only child, my son's memories had already begun to slide away. We hauled some of them back from the brink, dusted them off. Laughed .... Phew!

I caught up with an old friend. We had an impromptu dinner together, and it was good. The timing was right. I got to be there just when she needed a visit. I found her at home just when I wanted to see her. ... And she gave me a late Christmas gift of a voucher for something I'd just put on my mental "Must Have this year" list - a seaweed bath! Hurrah for synchronicity!

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I got to spend a little time in the town I lived in for 16 years, exploring new shopping areas, checking out a snazzy coffee-spot (good hot chocolate too). I had a bit of a book-shopping spree, and was especially glad to find Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain workbook. - Might kick-start me to exploring drawing again. I enjoyed following the book for a while a few years ago, but came to a full stop when it came to perspective. Maybe the workbook will help. I'd like to do some drawing this year, and to get over that barrier. While I don't think I'll be up to being Creative every day, I'd like to think I might do something every week this year. I'm excited at what is happening over at Leah's blog, though. Her lovely list of possible creative activities includes such things as colouring in a book, re-ordering a bookshelf, or making hot chocolate. Looking at it that way, I suppose I am creative every day.

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I've been participating in a poetry postcard project since September, sending and receiving poems (Yes, on postcards!) and getting quite a kick from finding these little treasures among my mail. So far, I've received 10 cards and sent out 11. When I made my hot-chocolate-stop today, I had no reading material with me, and no notebook! but I did have a few postcards in my bag, so I wrote 3 poems to send off to the next people on the list. I think people can join in at any time, as it's a Perennial Postcard project. Wanna join in?...

Driving home, I met the first snow of the winter. And some freezing fog. I drove slowly, with Christmas music playing. I loved it. Everywhere looks magical in the snow. I hope it's still around tomorrow when I wake up. I want to take photos. I want to go out wearing my (fake) fur hat. I want to build a snowman.

Friends

I have a friend who is due for surgery tomorrow. I have a friend who will return home tomorrow after 9 weeks away visiting her family. I have a friend with whom I've had a misunderstanding. I have a friend whose life is right now in one of those golden, full-of-great-and-little-blessings phases. I have a friend who told me today she's been 8 months off the cigarettes. I have a friend who is selling up and moving away. I have a friend with more than her share of family worries. I have a friend I might have offended. I have a friend who's given up guilt. I have a friend who lights candles for us all.

I have been blessed in my life with the friends who have come my way. Tonight, I give thanks for all of them, and for all of you, who I count as friends, my cyber-pals.

Sunday Scribbling..... Fortune Cookie

I know what they are, because they turn up in movies, don’t they? There was one where someone put an engagement ring inside a fortune cookie, I think. So I know what they are, but they don’t offer them in Irish Chinese restaurants. I don’t know why. Maybe they’re a peculiarly American-Chinese thing. Or maybe the Chinese people who came here had enough to be doing without worrying about where to source Fortune-Cookies, and they knew the Irish wouldn’t kick up a fuss about getting a little cookie at the end of a meal, but I’d never actually had one until very recently. They turned up at an up-market restaurant, and we were all tickled pink with that, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what my fortune said.
The one I remember having, the one that felt like the first real fortune cookie I’d had came to me on my last night in America. This family – these wonderful people who have taken me into their hearts, their home, their lives – bring me to share a meal at their favourite Chinese restaurant, and we have sticky dumplings (potstickers? ribstickers?), soup, all kinds of good things swing by on the Lazy Susan. We share. We enjoy being together, and I still cannot believe I am here, after three weeks, meeting so many wonderful people, traveling, through three states (well, bits of them!), and back again, to my friends, my newly-adopted American family. I don’t just feel like part of the family, I feel like part of their community. A teacher comes by the table to congratulate the daughter who’s just graduated from High School. The waiter calls me the “sister”. I’m so pleased! I belong here. When we go back to their home, there will be a few hours sleep before a very early-morning trip to the airport. Diana insists there will be no cab. She’s driving me, and we will have the quiet of San Francisco early morning to get there.
But before that, as the meal ends, there are the fortune-cookies. Ah. The tradition. Let’s see. And we each take our cookie. Mother, Father, Aunt, two daughters, and me. We check out our little slips of paper. There are words about love, and memories. There are words about friendship. There are words about trust and truth. My words… I’d like to say I remember them exactly, but I don’t. Yet I carry the sense of them with me. It was something like “When you have found something in your heart, it can never be lost”. If that’s not what the fortune-cookie really said, it’s what it really meant to me. I carry them in my heart.


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