Lost Islands

Some weeks have personalities of their own.  And so do some weekends.  Last Friday night while driving home from dinner with my daughter, I received a call on my bluetooth.  When I said hello the policeman on the other end asked me to identify myself.  They found my number on the cell phone of a friend who was unresponsive in an ambulance and I was the last person he had called.

Fast forward to Monday where I sat across from my friend as spring twilight flooded my upstairs sitting room with the grainy other-worldly light that comes just before dark - both of us a bit shell-shocked and misty-eyed.  You just never know.  Fortunately, he is ok but for 24 hours, no one was quite sure. Apparently, a seizure will do that to a person.

As we waited for our dinner to finish cooking in the oven, the conversation drifted to other things and I began telling him about an article I recently read regarding the real-life island that J.M. Barrie visited while writing Peter Pan.   I wondered if the island had been used as the setting for the lost boys' sanctuary, as was so magically depicted in the enduring tale.  Barrie visited the place over and over and once said that the call of the island can only be heard by those for whom it was meant...

I felt compelled to stay by my friend's hospital bed all weekend.  I also felt that if I could speak to him up close, somehow I could make him wake up because in my heart, I believed he was not having a stroke but perhaps a seizure.  When they finally allowed me to approach, I leaned in and told him I was there and that everything was going to be ok.  My words did the trick because he immediately turned his face towards mine and with his eyes still closed, smiled widely.  I heard one of the doctor's murmur, "That was a pretty good response".

Our weekend was a lost one although blessedly, one with a happy ending.  And Barrie's observation has stayed with me all this week long ... sometimes words too, can really only be heard by those for whom they are meant.

The Woman in the Glass

This ad for a designer faucet stopped me in my tracks.  I have felt this way most of my life. Well, at least since I first dipped into Little Women, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and the novels of Jane Austen.  The modern woman peering at an 18th century version of herself captured my imagination because I have often wondered what it would have been like to have lived in an earlier age.  My romantic notion of being a great heroine from one of my favorite books was later tempered when I matured and realized that most of the centuries I would have selected for myself were before central heating and indoor plumbing.

However, I am still entranced by trailing gowns, chaste courtships and love in other times.  A friend who knows some Hollywood types told me that Sense and Sensibility, the film production of Jane Austen's novel, is considered one of the most perfectly made movies and I agree.  The colors in the film, the images, the language and the loss and regain of love makes for a charming romantic escape to Georgian England.  Who wouldn't want to be Elinor Dashwood, the heroine who finally claims the heart of honorable and handsome Edward Ferrars?

I've discovered that my fancies have continued well into middle-age.  But now they manifest themselves in my desire to associate with courteous and genteel people who still keep their voices modulated when in public.  They manifest in the happy feeling I get when a little boy shyly holds a door open for me.  They manifest when I frequent shops where people are polite and make me feel welcomed.  And in the way I still care about dressing well.

As for love, gallantry in a relationship cannot be overstated.  The night my date helped me into my coat, my heart sang a song I hadn't heard in years.  If there were a puddle, I do believe he would have laid down his cloak for me.  Yes, I know the world is broken and far more complicated than the one the lass in the mirror faced.  And I know the past was not always what it seems to today's romantics.  Still, I reject overt cleavage, crassness, and vulgarity.  Instead, I seek out kind acts and perform as many as I can.  At times I feel like a dinosaur but I don't care.  The woman in my mirror keeps egging me on.

~

"The Woman in the Glass "

When you get what you want as your struggle for self
And the world makes you queen for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that woman has to say.

For it isn't your father or mother or husband
Whose judgement upon you must pass;
The person whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.

She's the person to please, never mind all the rest,
For she's with you clear up to the end.
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the woman in the glass if your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of life,
And get pats on your back as you pass.

But your final reward will be heartache and tears if you've cheated the woman in the glass.

~Dale Wimbrow