We are having the reader’s digest version of a relationship and luckily I have enough age on me to do more than take an educated guess about how to react to our curves and dips when they appear. Today, we woke late after coming home from a party at 2AM – we had our coffee and tea on the front porch. The day began as one of those unforgettable fall days here in New Orleans. The bayou was glistening in the sunlight, the air had enough of a chill on it to make the sunshine delightful. We put on Kiri Te Kanawa and then Jessye Norman and listened to their beautiful voices fill in the in-between layers with even more beauty.
Then we took Loca for a walk and came back and again found ourselves surrounded by a day that made sitting on the porch mandatory. We put on Grant McLennan, who I just found out died young, in his early forties, and were chit chatting about an upcoming trip and our perceptions about where we were going and who we were seeing and it became clear that we had different expectations for our travels.
In a skittish moment, when her vision was bouncing off of mine, in our peripheral vision, we both witnessed the first pelican returning to the bayou. A large Louisiana brown soared by with ample wingspan enough to catch a shadow into the calm water, he sailed passed the house and then swooped around to pass again.
Amazing.
The stop gaps on our visions began loosening up and before we had finished lunch, we had modified out travel plans to include yours, mine and ours.
I learned sometime back there are no mind readers in a relationship and communication – as trite as that word might seem – means you have to talk, say what you feel, be vulnerable, you have to risk that your demands may appear petty or unreasonable to someone else, you have to open yourself up to someone else’s point of view, you have to stop worry about being a burden, and that relationships are a delicate balance between not losing yourself, about finding yourself, and about being yourself – the ole staying me in the we chestnut.
The pelicans are back!!