I’VE BEEN LUNCHING with Billy Coffey
these last 2 weeks,
though he doesn’t know it.
I am reading
his book
a chapter at a time
during lunch,
a habit I developed
when the stack of books
I planned to read “someday”
kept having books added to it,
never taken from it.
I had fallen out of the habit
of reading.
One chapter
each day
at lunch,
a remedy.
Yes, I am lunching with Billy
AND having conversations with him,
though he doesn’t know that either.
I AM RESPONDING to
things he’s said about
why some people avoid reunions,
a man playing
hide-and-seek with God,
a neighbor’s loneliness
gone unnoticed.
I am responding
to words I’m reading this week
as though they were
words he wrote this week,
though of course they are not,
which points to a fascinating aspect
about the writer-reader relationship.
* * *
I ONCE GOT A CALL
on a bright sunny day
as I scrambled
to get a handful of kids
ready for an outing.
In the midst of laughter,
simultaneous conversations
and
shouts up the stairs and down
about the whereabouts of favorite shorts and such
came the ringing.
I answered, giggling.
On the other end was a woman, soft-voiced, weeping.
We were at opposite ends of the emotional continuum.
She, a stranger,
had suffered a terrible loss
and
had been given
a copy of an article
I had written
after a loss of my own,
an article
handed out to a class
a friend of hers had attended
just one week prior,
an article describing my feelings,
feelings she now had.
“I just need to talk with somebody
who feels the same way.”
* * *
Now the article
had been published
18 months earlier
and the words in it
written
almost a year before that.
Did she wonder,
hearing my happy voice
on the other end of the line,
whether she had the wrong number?
It took some effort
to get my head
where it needed to be
for the conversation,
but that was okay
and I was glad she’d called.
But this was a wake-up call for me,
that words written
are true for the writer
at the point in time they are written,
but for the reader
they are true
of the writer
at the point in time they are read.
* * *
Don’t mind me.
I’m way off on another philosophical maelstrom, I know.
It’s just that my lunches with Billy reminded me.
More than once I have been caught off-guard by someone saying, “I know exactly how you feel” and they are referring to something I wrote 3 months or 3 years or 10 years ago that they just read.
I wrote this post in my car in the Lowe’s parking lot before going in for more stovetop polish.
I really don’t care if your stove shines, just keep writing. Great stuff!
Yes, amazing thoughts Marilyn. Some that I have been having myself lately, possibly off on a slightly different tangent:
Having worked through various situations by oneself, it is sometimes easy to forget that another may or may not have got to this point in their life yet. And to rush in with glib/or any other words, may be rather too much for them to deal with at that point in time in their lives. Am I making any sense?
And on another different and reverse tangent. A friend has had a radical mastectomy. I am calling it radical, because that is how I see it. I am having a hard time coping with the fact that a few months ago, she was one of the fittest and healthiest women I knew. Always kind, compassionate, working for others, trekking in Nepal to learn and raise funds for leprosy awareness. And now this. Because of some errant pre-cancerous cells found in a mammogram. And after initial biopsy and lumpectomies she chose to have the breast removed. It has hit my like a sledgehammer. And I am not sure why. How quickly one’s life can be changed in a moment. I thought I had worked through quite a lot of these things after my husband’s sudden death many years ago, but obviously I haven’t confronted these sorts of things happening to me or another! Perhaps it is affecting me, just because she is the first close friend to undergo this experience, so far.
It was lovely then to be able to take her out for coffee yesterday, a month after her op. And I was pleased that she chose to speak to me of her feelings and experiences, as I didn’t have the heart to direct the conversation in any direction at all, worrying that I didn’t want to wear her out emotionally so soon after the op.
Quick question, Marilyn: Did you write that post where you were at the time, because you suddenly felt you had to write down your thoughts immediately before you forgot? Or because you had a little spare time? Excuse me being nosy. Not sure why I need to ask this of you!
I’m am so SORRY to hear of the shock both you and your friend have received, Annie (because…truly…a diagnosis that comes into the life of one person comes into the lives of everyone connected in some way, I think).
I am glad for your coffee date, which (for me anyway) is therapy as much as a medical treatment. Just to spend time with a friend and talk…about whatever. It can be the cancer or it can be the cement on the sidewalk. (I will write more to you privately later when I am on my own computer. I am not right now, but wanted to respond without letting more time pass.)
In other matters:
- I completely understood what you meant by not wanting to rush in with comments on a subject when you and the other person may be in different places in your processing. Wise!
- I wrote the post in the parking lot because as I was gathering my things together to go into the store it came into my head. I had just finished reading a chapter of Billy and was amused by how I was mentally conversing with him. Suddenly it all seemed to connect with the call I got all those years ago, how the caller had an expectation of me. It seemed noteworthy and I knew I better stop and jot down my thoughts. Practically the whole post came flowing out into my little notepad I carry with me!
I think the beauty of words is that neither time nor place can bind them, that somehow they break free of both and have a way of getting wherever they’re most needed.
Thanks for this, Marilyn. You can have a conversation with me anytime.
Thanks, Billy!
This was so great. A great reminder of the power of words.
Oh, I have to get a copy of Snow Day!