I just finished writing a thank you note to my mechanic.  The other night he spirited my cell phone out of a mysterious black hole under the driver’s seat.

Why a thank you note for such a small thing?  …because he didn’t know the size of what he’d just done.  I wanted him to be able to share the depth of meaning hidden in that one-minute job.

My mother and sister are both seriously ill.  They are in two different hospitals in two different cities.  It’s possible my mother won’t survive this time.  Because he got my cell phone back into my hands, my mother and sister were able to connect with each other last night.

Having thanked him, now I want to thank you, dear reader.  Because just as he had no idea of the significance of what he did, there are also undoubtedly times you’ve done things like that and never knew what you did.

So thank you for being you, and doing what you do.

Life is so much more than we know…

I’m waiting for S. to decide if he’s staying or going.

He had been separated from his wife for several years when we met. At first, he was eager to complete the process of severing their lives.

But recently, on the other side of a birthday and a serious illness, he’s started feeling old.

He wonders if it would be best to finish what he’s started… if he would lose contact with children now grown… if he has it in him any more.  He’s tired.

It’s tempting to check email after this last long silence, but more sane to put my weight down into other things. I go for long walks, feeling each step’s intricate relationship with the ground, breathing in-three-pause-five-out-eight.

I move to a new studio… clear the clutter from my writing room… pick up the last vegetables from the farm…

…I’m waiting without waiting.

My new possible guest is nervous. He’s asked for pictures of the apartment inside and out, and my address so he can Google it and tour the neighborhood —and late last night he emailed that today he would like to have a conversation.

His angst brings back memories of a few travel adventures of my own:

…the Alice-in-Wonderland charm of the tea-shop waitress’s incredibly narrow one-room-with-loft on West 72nd  –and the nearly tomb-like quiet, which it took time to love,

…the ship’s-berth efficiency of a hotel room in Tokyo, where figuring out how to turn on the water and flush the toilet was an adventure in itself,

…and the pillars right in the middle of a workshop room with 45 or 50 people arriving next morning–who would think to ask ahead of time if there were pillars?

Not least, I remember the deserted halls after the end of a retreat, when everyone else including the staff had left and I became a ghost in the monastery.

Oh that’s right! I wasn’t the only ghost that night—there was a hungry soul who hadn’t realized there wouldn’t be anyplace to get food. I shared one of my power bars.