ah, i met her my first day of work at at a natural foods grocery store in texas...nearly 20 years ago. she knew all about wine. i knew a lot about food, and wanted to know more about wine. and there you have it: the recipe to feed a friendship that has lasted half my lifetime. we spent 16 years together in the same city, several of those as upstairs/downstairs neighbors and at the same workplace. whether we see each other 3 times a day, or 3 times a year, each new time picks up right where the old one leaves off. a seamless continuum of human connection -- the connection for whom you always pick up the phone,for whom you always have a shoulder for tears or an ear for laughs, for whom you are a ready rescuer from a bad date, for whom your futon and extra pillows are always available. THAT person.
i was able to visit THAT person's neck of the woods for a few months recently. i had not seen her in 3 years, maybe more. we poured wine. we broke bread. we relived our memories of each other, our lives, our loves, our laughs, our foibles, our sorrows. we confessed to one another how "that little thing you did, that simple gesture back in 19_ _ or 20_ _ it saved me", each of us having no idea how the actions of our friendship sustained each other in challenging times.
we toasted and smiled. we were warm and wonderful.
as i watched my friend cook (as she insisted while i sit at the table and sip my wine), our conversation veered into the most magically stimulating discussion. i cannot recall what preceded or triggered the topic, but we found ourselves wrangling with the meaning of the word soul.
soul. the human soul.
that oh so ponderable never-never-place that is touched but not with hands, that is felt but not by nerves, that is seared but not with heat, that is rocked but not by music, that is pierced but not with arrows, that is soothed but not with medicine.
from soul, we meandered to afterlife, heaven, religion, politics, art, literature, humor, food, wine and friendship and back full circle to soul. and, no closer to a tangible understanding, we decided, or maybe we let the wine decide, that we are not here to define soul, but rather to live it, and let it live, and that eventually, we would understand soul better, but also respect it as undefinable, not finite, not absolute. we toasted to our wine-laden revelation and thanked our lucky souls for these things:
happy birthday my dear friend. i can't wait to see you in a few weeks and pick up where we left off.
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