Saturday

The birds are out by my fountain in force this morning. It's lovely to see them hopping in and out of the pond or walking on the large leaves beside the pond. It's not sunny yet, but it's going to be a warm day.

This was an uneventful week workwise, except I had lunch with someone I hadn't seen since 1971. Actually he was someone I dated a few times before Bob and I got serious about getting married. We only spent an hour together yet it was enough time to get down and dirty about some of the events in our lives. And, it was enough time to know that I probably don't want to go there again.

He picked me up outside my office and we drove to Beaches downtown Manhattan Beach. During the drive he told me he has had both hips replaced so he has trouble with balance and walking – especially upstairs. Beaches is an upstairs restaurant that he picked! And, besides his hips, he is hard of hearing, has arthritis in his fingers, has lupus that affects his skin – he showed me some of his skin lesions that won’t heal, and he recently had open chest surgery to remove an aneurism. I actually jokingly asked what else was wrong with him. Well, he really is an old man, I thought.

After we ordered we talked some more. He is married – he got married at age 48 – 10 years after Bob and I. He has two sons, both in their late 20s, and his wife is a social worker at a private school.

So, during lunch we kept it light though I told him about Paul – and he barely reacted. We talked about work and Hungary where he grew up and escaped from during the 1956 revolution, and a few people we both know. It really wasn’t interesting – until the way back. I said we shouldn’t wait to get together for another 30 to 40 years and he said next time he would tell me about all the shit in his life, and without missing a beat, he told me about his older son who has been a drug addict since age 13 who might be going into jail for 6 months, his young son who barely contacts his parents, and his wife who is an enabler. Yet, he did admit that he's never been a mother, so he can understand how a mother would not want to cut her drug addit son from her apron strings -- something I can definitely relate to. So, it appears that we have more in common than what first appeared. I told him more about Paul and about how Bob and I didn't see eye to eye about how to treat and care for him most of the time, yet my lunch date really didn’t want to listen to that. He wanted to tell me about his own stuff. He also said what he most wants to do is go away to Hungary – and I suspect without his wife. WOW – a lot more stuff than I bargained for. It just goes to show that everybody has a story if you dig in deep enough.

I wrote this little poem in response to my weekly Friday prompt. The subject was something I forgot:

Not Quite The Same

I forgot what he looked like.
After all, we hadn’t seen each other
in almost 40 years.
And when I saw him again
he was just as before.
Well, not quite. He’s aged
as we all have aged.

Yet there they were:
the same smooth round cheeks,
the same playful grin,
and the accent,
ah, the accent.
that’s what I fell for
so many years ago.

But we’ve both come a long way.
There’s no bridging those years,
those events,
those life stories.
I’ll have to remember what
he looks like today
if I ever see him again.