April 19th, 2014

At first I was shy and maybe they were too, but after many thimblefulls of wine, half Pinot Noir
and half Manishevitz - and what a feat to pour both bottles, portion by portion, into the tiny glass sitting on the white table cloth without destroying anything - there was a settling in and we began to smile behind our smiles. I lived in the west end of Hartford she said There was a health food store, a wonderful theatre, and such a friendliness, an openness, that was not where I grew up in New York. I let sink in the image of this woman, young and beautiful, walking streets that I now walk. The other woman says my mother died when I was seven and a half. No one talked about it. In class when we were asked to stand and tell the names of our parents, I lied. There was such a shame in in being motherless. What I would like to know though, she says, is where your remarkable compassion comes from. My students, I stammer through a blush, and she shakes her head no before I finish my sentence no, no. It is much older and deeper in you than that. We are interrupted by everyone saying goodbye but her words, all of their words, stay with me through the night like the plumb brandy that moves through my veins like a pulsing light. Time and tribe collapses around us and we are part of a single tapestry. As we separate into the night, the fabric holds.