A Beautiful Day for a Drive...
Good thing it was, too, because I made the super-evil-stupid drive to and from Dallas again this weekend. And I'd do it again, in a heartbeat, for the reason I did it today.
A few months ago I got back in touch with an old friend from high school, one I had lost contact with way too long ago. Somewhere along the way, he informed me that his company was sending him to Texas for an annual meeting of some kind. I live in Texas, so of course, he wondered if we could catch up while he was here. Where in Texas was he being sent? Of course... Dallas.
Now, I grew up in California, which is a pretty tall state. Texas is about as wide as California is tall. And at the time, the hour-or-so drive to San Francisco from home seemed like such a looooooooooooooooooooong trip. But now, I apparently think nothing of a four-hour hop in the car to see good ol' Joe. We didn't get to spend a whole lot of time together; in fact, I think the drive was about twice as long as the conversation. But the conversation was important, so it was well worth it. Let me give you a teeny-tiny bit of backstory, so that the significance of what he said this morning, might hit you like it did me.
Joe and I were good friends in school, though I wouldn't even venture to give some measure of our closeness. Just the good-friends-and-that's-it that I was with a couple of guys I knew at the time. But one thing will always stick in my mind above all else. See, Joe worked at the gas station, loved to work on cars, and was therefore probably mistaken by more than one person for just another gearhead. But I knew better. He was so much more. For one thing, he was a terrific friend. I could talk to him about anything, for hours. For another, he was quite protective of me, and that can be a really good feeling for a young gal like myself. And for another, he was full of surprises. One evening he called me from the station, and told me to look outside at the sky. He had noticed a gorgeous sunset, and wanted to share it with someone he knew could appreciate it, and he thought of me. That was just the kind of guy Joe was - is.
So anyway, over the last few months, he and I have caught up. We've done a lot of reminiscing about the past, and not so much talking about the present, or the intervening years. This weekend was for talking about the present, mostly. I was filling him in on the state of chaos my life is in right now, and on what I'm doing about it. At some point I said something about what I would do "when I get my act together," and that's when the old Joe kicked in. He told me that I needed to just purge that sentence from my vocabulary. He told me about times in his life where he was always waiting for this to happen and then everything would be fine, and then waiting for that to happen and things would even out. He said if I live too much in the past or the future, I forget the good things about the present that are going on around me... He likened it to sitting in traffic, in the middle of a beautiful sunset, so busy worrying about the best route to get home and what needed to be done there, that the sunset passed unnoticed. I can always count on Joe and his sunsets to bring me around.
It got to be time for me to leave, and I hugged him goodbye. It's funny how the years can melt away sometimes, because suddenly it felt like I was seventeen again, completely safe in the strong arms of someone who delighted in playing the part of protector. And then on the way home, the radio hit me with "In My Life" and got me thinking about the past... and about the present... and about three little girls who make up my world and my reason for living. Everything else is just details. In my life, I love them most. And I'm grateful to Joe for the reminder, to stop worrying about the future and start appreciating what I have today.
A few months ago I got back in touch with an old friend from high school, one I had lost contact with way too long ago. Somewhere along the way, he informed me that his company was sending him to Texas for an annual meeting of some kind. I live in Texas, so of course, he wondered if we could catch up while he was here. Where in Texas was he being sent? Of course... Dallas.
Now, I grew up in California, which is a pretty tall state. Texas is about as wide as California is tall. And at the time, the hour-or-so drive to San Francisco from home seemed like such a looooooooooooooooooooong trip. But now, I apparently think nothing of a four-hour hop in the car to see good ol' Joe. We didn't get to spend a whole lot of time together; in fact, I think the drive was about twice as long as the conversation. But the conversation was important, so it was well worth it. Let me give you a teeny-tiny bit of backstory, so that the significance of what he said this morning, might hit you like it did me.
Joe and I were good friends in school, though I wouldn't even venture to give some measure of our closeness. Just the good-friends-and-that's-it that I was with a couple of guys I knew at the time. But one thing will always stick in my mind above all else. See, Joe worked at the gas station, loved to work on cars, and was therefore probably mistaken by more than one person for just another gearhead. But I knew better. He was so much more. For one thing, he was a terrific friend. I could talk to him about anything, for hours. For another, he was quite protective of me, and that can be a really good feeling for a young gal like myself. And for another, he was full of surprises. One evening he called me from the station, and told me to look outside at the sky. He had noticed a gorgeous sunset, and wanted to share it with someone he knew could appreciate it, and he thought of me. That was just the kind of guy Joe was - is.
So anyway, over the last few months, he and I have caught up. We've done a lot of reminiscing about the past, and not so much talking about the present, or the intervening years. This weekend was for talking about the present, mostly. I was filling him in on the state of chaos my life is in right now, and on what I'm doing about it. At some point I said something about what I would do "when I get my act together," and that's when the old Joe kicked in. He told me that I needed to just purge that sentence from my vocabulary. He told me about times in his life where he was always waiting for this to happen and then everything would be fine, and then waiting for that to happen and things would even out. He said if I live too much in the past or the future, I forget the good things about the present that are going on around me... He likened it to sitting in traffic, in the middle of a beautiful sunset, so busy worrying about the best route to get home and what needed to be done there, that the sunset passed unnoticed. I can always count on Joe and his sunsets to bring me around.
It got to be time for me to leave, and I hugged him goodbye. It's funny how the years can melt away sometimes, because suddenly it felt like I was seventeen again, completely safe in the strong arms of someone who delighted in playing the part of protector. And then on the way home, the radio hit me with "In My Life" and got me thinking about the past... and about the present... and about three little girls who make up my world and my reason for living. Everything else is just details. In my life, I love them most. And I'm grateful to Joe for the reminder, to stop worrying about the future and start appreciating what I have today.
posted by SaraSmile | 2:28 PM
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