Sensitive Friend,
When visiting my aunt, I joined a community event. This was my second time there. The first time, everybody ignored me. This second time, women asked me questions, and one woman invited me to visit her next day and to see their private beach.
The wind was fierce, not beach weather. However, as I’m always willing to meet new people, I went. She wasn’t at home yet, and the husband took me to the private beach, with extensive dunes at the back, a hidden path along the dunes, where the privileged of the area, walk and greet each other like in a secret ploy. Everything is manicured, beautiful, rich, wild, and strange at the same time.
He told me they had adopted a child from Turkey. As we walked, we met a couple that wanted to adopt a child from one of the Eastern Europe countries. I admire people who adopt. They hugged me, just for saying that.
We walked back to their home–a huge house, in dire conditions. It had a beautiful Mediterranean architecture, but it needed, repairs and paint, I thought. We remained in the patio all the time. Just before my departure, she took me inside to take a peek inside. It was magnificent, like a Mediterranean castle with incredible woodwork, so unexpected for a house by an American shore. I noticed big holes in the walls, and it became even more evident the house needed serious repairs.
I had a great time with the lady of the house. In her thirties, in search of a God, she became religious well before her marriage. She grew up in a Catholic family, and something didn’t work in the spiritual department. This woman had studied Greek, Latin, and was extremely well-read; I call that cultured. Her father had been an architecture professor (she whispered “emeritus”) at Princeton.
Something in the way she talked was so friendly, so subtle and so strange, so light, and so serious.
Wise Friend,
Will go back? Didn’t your aunt show those places before?
Sensitive Friend,
I would like to meet them again.
I went back to my aunt, asked her to get in the car and took her, 5 minutes away from her place, to show her the dunes, the private beaches, the ‘path of adoption’. At the time, my aunt had been living nearby for at least 15 years. She never knew about the place. She was so excited and looking forward to showing those places to her 80-year-old three other girlfriends.
I told her a story about a transient friend in California, Joy. It amazed Joy of how quickly I found outlier places despite a busy life. She used to joke “As you’ve been in Los Angeles for more than two weeks, could you give me directions to …?”
eachword-eachday 