peace

I recall the way that she would lean to fill up the kettle for us to make tea in the office. It was unusual… awkward. And it was loveable, like everything that she did. I’d walk to the kitchen behind her and feel amused, and enamoured, by the way she walked. It was like a catwalk model, but slower… and she was funky (in the true sense of the word, not the modern American distortion). She had balance and elegance and style and grace. And yet she was clumsy. It was hilarious and beautiful. Being French, she didn’t put milk into tea or coffee, but as I told her how we drank it in England, she started to try it… and she liked it. Thus, I would make two cups of tea with a little milk and quarter a spoon of sugar. The connection was magical and inexplicable. It was something at a biological level… possibly based on smell or something else. Alas, it was not to be. She was engaged and had a son… and another would soon be on the way. The friendship remains to this day, but it is fragile and intermittent, as friendships often are when one friend is single and the other is in a relationship. Even more so if there are children. For instance, there was a time in Madrid that I met a lady from Honduras. We became lovers, and she told me about her deeply troubled past. Her father had been killed in gang war, and her family was extremely poor. She was such a wonderful and sweet individual. So gentle and soft… and I wished she would be more aggressive and say no to people more. A couple of years after I moved to the USA, I received a message from her. It was a generic one sent to many people. The message read something along the lines of ‘I appreciate your friendship, but I have met someone, and I need to focus on that. Therefore, I will no longer be in contact with any of you. I hope you will understand.’ I think of her sometimes and feel sad about how miserable it must be to be with someone who causes you to feel that you have to publicly announce the end of your friendships. A friend of mine was recently telling me that she had been unhappy for fifteen ears of her eighteen-year marriage. The last three years had been better because my friend had taken care of her mother-in-law, which meant that her husband finally started to appreciate her and teat her kindly and with respect. After eighteen years of marriage, her husband passed away due to cancer.

My hope is that all of us can find some peace and happiness in life.






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