Folds

Life is not linear. Mathmeticians might argue that there are no coincidences and that chaos theory can predict everything from hurricanes to stock markets; I prefer to leave people to serendipity. Any person piddling around in Facebook or Myspace has certainly stumbled upon some long ago playmates, childhood classmates, lost friends or old lovers. Like the movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, so much of where we were comprises who we become and how we ended standing in this particular spot. People and past places are catalysts or reagents that effect our current product. And life keeps moving forward.

A life, a rich and varied life, demands ingredients: people, experiences, places that each evoke feeling and thought. Progress and momentum is more than self. Occasionally, we are given a gift of seeing ourselves through the memories of another. Was I really like that? Sometimes we get to share something poignant that reveals a loveliness about someone from long ago. I never buried a tangible time capsule in my backyard, but somedays, the discovery of some people is like unearthing a sealed box of buried trinkets. Sometimes the box is filled with dust. Sometimes you find a rare baseball card. I think of the movie Amelie, where she returns a box of tiny tin toys to a grown man. He has been given a glorious treasure he had long forgotten, but now remembers loving dearly. To hold the toy soldiers is to reclaim something for the past he had let lapse…something he had set aside.  

I am happy to wish a friend Happy Birthday this Friday. We were once silly and big for our britches, Julie….(now I did it!) I hope your birthday is a wonderous day. I would insist on the Backyard BBQ! I am thrilled to fold you back into the rhythm of my life. And with each fold and crease, new people and new places happen. We experience people in a whole new way. Each unfolding and refolding is a chance to smooth out crimps and crinkles. I get to iron out somethings, like a shirt tail all bunched up and annoying. I am excited to find some old friends (we are not old!) and I am equally excited to make some new ones. I also adore that some people once set down can be as if new people in our lives. We may have some central core left unchanged with time, but we all change. The tincture of time has had a lovely effect.

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