There's something I've been meaning to do for a couple of months now, since I realized how much it means to me at this juncture (yup, still here! hanging out at the crossroads!) to let other people know what they've meant to me, and it's become more pressing as I've been forced to admit how unlikely it is that I'll have time even to track them all down, let alone to tell each of them individually how grateful I am (and why) that they touched my life.I can't be persuaded to get on facebook, though I'm grateful to those who have used it to help me reconnect. (Thanks, Margie! Thanks, Ted!) Instead I want to create a page organized by time and place and simply list names (as well as I can remember them). People still google themselves, yes? Maybe they'll find themselves there, or people who make a link between us can let them know they're there. (Many I've lost touch with, while to some I am a near or total stranger - Pete Rose was a case in point, but now we're good buds.)
I don't know whether I'll get to it, or how comprehensive I'll manage to make it if I do, but I can at least state my intention - that might give me a push to make good on it!
In the same spirit, I've started to do something that feels uncomfortable for its flavor of self-promotion, but that I hope might spread more than my dark and silly musings rippling into the world: dropping my card around town (something I never got into the habit of when I really should have, when I had a business and not just a blog to my name). I don't plan to scatter them willy-nilly but to leave them where some tiny connection has already been made, especially where someone has shown me a gratuitous kindness. If you were led here by a strip of cardstock with the site address and tiny photos of some glorious canines, I want to say, Hey! You've got light in you. Thanks for throwing some my way.
Tonight I left a card with the waitress at Bernie's Southern Bistro, she of the great, kind smile; she who happily substituted whiskey for rum in my mojito (just a half dose, as I need to be careful mixing my drugs these days). Bernie's! Such good food! Amazing prices at happy hour, and – most rarely – a place where they play great music just below the level of human conversation. Go with people you actually like talking to - you can use your inside voice there.
Kindnesses in abundance today. Wish I could have slipped a card into the hand of the man who told me, as I passed in my ocean blue coat, "That color looks good on you, young lady." Forgive the color-tinged generalization, but in my experience no one delivers compliments more gracefully than a black gentleman of a certain age and decorous style, delivers them so they arrive at their intended destination and land lightly. I did thank him with all the grace I could return.
Forza!
Gretchen