Celebrating Work

Several days ago I visited a 90 year old friend who is suffering from cancer and a stroke.  As I entered his room, he was sitting in a wheel chair, a frozen and, to my mind, horrified look on his face.  After saying hi and kissing him, I asked:

“You’re not reading are you?”

“No.”

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“About what?”

“Chapter 15.”  It was the chapter he had been working on before the stroke.

I thought the exchange captured the essence of Daniel’s life.  As social and charismatic as he has been, his primary focus is always on his work.  It has occupied and nurtured him, bringing him equal measures of challenge, comfort, passion, and just plain engagement. He is an unapologetic working man, dedicated to his craft and, no matter how others judge him, content with his lot.

I have another friend, named Rebecca, who is consistently animated by working.  A few years ago she left her secure university position and simply continued her research and writing—minus the committees and the departmental squabbles.  When she isn’t absorbed in her writing, Rebecca gardens, which she does with much the same seriousness and total engagement that she brings to her research.  Gardening is work for her, and that’s a very good thing.  Rebecca tells me that she’s always been this way and sees no reason her focus on work should ever end.

I think that work has gotten a bad rap in our culture.  When we picture very hard workers, we imagine “workaholics,” people who are addicted, people who can’t help what they do, people who avoid family and friends.  They are said to be limited, stunted. Their husbands and wives often feel abandoned and comfort themselves by making fun of their “obsessed” spouses.  Listeners sympathize.  They understand how much the “workaholic” is missing in life.

Long ago, Sigmund Freud insisted that love and work were the cornerstones of the good life.  Without one or both, we would be alienated from our basic needs and drives.  Work, itself, isn’t a problem.  It’s when we work long hours in ways that fail to engage us.  Karl Marx called this “alienated labor,”  that is work that without meaning, which distances us from our true selves.  Many of us, for instance, work long hours without relish because we fear being fired or worry about failure and humiliation.

At this point, you might want to make a class distinction.  To be sure, many millions of people work under terrible conditions, seeking only the means of food and shelter; and  they would avoid this kind of work if they could.  It would be arrogant and misguided to speak for them.  But move just a rung or two up the economic ladder and there’s a difference.  Farmers traditionally hold fast to their work, with all of its vast variety.  We all know plumbers, carpenters, and mechanics who find their work sustaining.  The appliance repairman, who came to fix our stove a couple of weeks ago agreed:  “I was just on vacation for a week, sitting around.  I couldn’t wait to get back to work.  I love fixing things.”  Today, my barber, unbidden, went on and on about how much she loves her work.  “How about your colleagues,”  I asked.  “Most of them do, too, she responded.  “It’s just a great way to spend our time.”

I think that work has gotten a particularly bad rap for retired people.  The objection to work follows two lines of reasoning.  First, those who continue working demonstrate the workaholic gene—or germ.  They are addicts who can’t make a ‘healthy’ shift.  Second, retirees who continue to work are actually resisting rest, relaxation, and freedom because their identity is so completely wrapped up in their professional roles.

Yet all the people that I know who are of retirement age and still working, either in old jobs or new engagements, seem particularly pleased with their lives.

Lately, I’ve been reading a memoir by the poet, Donald Hall, age 89, and still working with energy and pleasure.  The book is called Life Work.  In part, the book is an homage to the farmer’s life lived by his grandparents.  He is at pains to show us how his life as a poet is not so different.

Years ago, Hall quit a tenured and well paid professorship at the University of Michigan to move to his ancestral home in rural New Hampshire.  He had liked teaching well enough but it took him from his greater love, writing.  The transition represented risks.  How would he support himself?  How would he respond to the isolation of small town life?  But the promise was greater than the risk: to spend hour after hour totally absorbed in his writing.  Absorption, energy, and enthusiasm are his measures of the good life.  Each morning, as he awakens, for instance, he can’t wait to get lost in his writing.  He will be hardly aware of the passing hours.  That is the sign of success.

Hall works in a state of he calls “absorbedness,” which is a close cousin to Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of “flow.”  Flow is achieved when you are totally focused on a task, usually a task that requires you to extend yourself beyond your regular capacity.  The activity demands your full attention.  There are no distractions, no thoughts of what else you might do, what you might have done, what you should be doing.  Your mind is quiet.

Hall summarizes this state of mind in describing his wife, Jane Kenyon, a fellow poet.  “Her garden,” he tells us, “is work because it is a devotion undertaken with passion and conviction; because it absorbs her; because it is a task or unrelenting quest which cannot be satisfied.”

I have friends whose engagement with work echoes and amplifies Hall’s commitment.  One friend, a highly successful doctor and hospital administrator, retired early, partly because of the anxiety of so much responsibility, partly because of the constant static in his mind.  At first, Stephen simply relaxed, read, ran, saw friends—and distanced himself from responsibility.  Within a few years, though, he began to organize his reading, then to write and publish it in increasing profusion.

By my lights, he is back to work–without the anxiety that had plagued him for years.  Why?  I think it’s because the new work has been so freely chosen that he is not distracted by thoughts of failure, particularly thoughts of failing others.  Stephen seems to have found a late life calling.  A calling is a sense that the work almost chooses you; and when you are free to accept, even embrace the call, your mind is quiet.

I have another friend, Manny, who for more than 40 years, helped to build and manage a school for highly troubled children. It was good work that, for six or seven hours each day, fully occupied his attention.  In retirement, he has been able to extend the disciplines—Tai Chi, Meditation, prayer, exercise—that have been his passion for 50 years.  Now he pursues them for many hours each day, unencumbered by the boundaries of family and occupational life.  You might say that he has continued to work.  But this might be even more fulfilling.  Unlike the work he had done with the school, he is not pulled and tugged in many directions.  He is like the Zen Roshi:  When he eats an apple, his disciple tells us, he is only eating an apple.

My friend, Gary, was a businessman, who had his successes and failures, but labored in for decades but without fulfillment.  He was rarely able to bring the best of himself to the job.  He was often aggravated and anxious, and rarely at peace.  Retirement brought relief.  For a while Gary luxuriated in the freedom from work.  But with time, freedom from is being replaced with freedom to pursue his true love, music.  It is there that he can immerse himself and lose himself, or, in Hall’s terms, where he achieves a state of “absorbedness.”  Yes, Gary is retired, but he’s also working again, and that feels sweet this time around.

I know that my homage to work fails the subtlety test. I’m such an advocate.  But I really do think that work has gotten a bad name, especially for retired people, who are supposed to take advantage of the freedom they have earned.  They have, indeed, earned the right to relax, to putter—and, if they have the resources, to work as much or as little as they choose.  They are also free to work and work hard, which I am convinced is good for the soul.

Committed and absorbing work feels good, period, and when conducted in the service of a good cause, it feels even better.  Work is best when it is freely chosen and highly challenging, and even better when it feels like a calling.  When optimally engaging, work displaces the internal chatter and judgment about how much better a person you should or could be.  It quiets the mind.  Productivity and a quiet mind.  That works for me.

What Delilah Didn’t Understand

This is the barbershop that the Old Man has been frequenting for the last 20 years.  It’s part of a chain, staffed by young women, who move briskly through their work while exchanging pleasantries and chatter with each other and sometimes with their customers.  The main attraction for the Old Man is that he doesn’t have to make an appointment—it’s not a doctor’s office, for god’s sake—and the service is cheap.

He can’t bring himself to call it a hair cutting salon or any of the fancy names people use these days.  The thought of spending $50 or $60 at a salon is repugnant to him.  He knows women who take their little children—like their hair “style” really matters—and bully their husbands into salon treatments.  Not his kind of people.

Since he began to noticeably age, the Old Man has been getting a buzz cut, which is a lot like the crew cuts he got as a boy.  Now he likes them because they are extremely easy to maintain, requiring no care at all, actually, and because they give him the tough look that he favors.  All through the years women have told him they like a softer look.  One even wanted him to put some pounds on his belly.  Talk about repugnant.  But now as then, the Old Man prefers the hard, jaw-and-cheek-bone-prominent look that is highlighted by the buzz cut.

No amount of insight and maturation can compete with the dictates of the old locker rooms, the gatherings of boys and young men that so colored his youth.  The boys were merciless with anyone, boy, girl, or grownup, who showed any accumulation of fat.  They cultivated a hard guy look—Humphrey Bogart, Paul Newman, John Wayne—those kind of men.  Even though the Old Man considered himself sensitive and, as a teenager, often hung out with girls, so they could talk about feelings and books—even though he honored his feelings, he preferred the hard look that betrayed none of them.

As Marci, the hair cutter, neared the end, trimming his eyebrows—“They’re a little bushy, don’t you think?”—and his ears—“That’s what older fellows need”—he makes some faces, alternately hardening and softening his expressions and, making sure the beginnings of a double chin are hidden, settles on one that is engaged but uncommitted.  In that state, a memory slipped into view.

The Old Man was ten.  He’d just finished a race against his friends Kevin and Angelo.  The three of them were the fastest kids in the class and often raced, mostly for the fun of it but partly to show off.  As he walked back from the finish line, he came upon one of the school toughs—his moniker was, in fact, Toughie Rizzuto—beating up on one of the smallest kids in the class.  Without thinking, the still-young Old Man—his name was Sam—jumped the tough and they fought it out.  That meant they pushed and shoved a bit, warning the other not to try anything too bad, and kept snarls on their faces.  There wasn’t a real punch thrown.

But that fight was one of the most important events of the Old Man’s life.  The school was divided equally among Irish, Jewish, and Italian kids, of whom the Italians were the toughest.  When they gathered, they gathered in gangs.  When the Irish and Jewish kids gathered, it was in groups.  The Irish kids lived south of the school.  The Jewish kids, north.  The Italian families lived across the creek, which served as a stern boundary.  No one was supposed to cross the stream into Italian territory.  Or else they’d be beaten up.

But Sam crossed it all the time.  He loved balancing on the trees, like a tightrope walker, that had fallen across the stream during the Hurricane of 1954.  He loved, even more, daring anyone on the dreaded other side to catch him.  Sam figured that he could outrun any of the Italian kids, even Angelo, if need be.  His friends warned him and warned him, but Sam kept crossing the stream into the Italian forest. Angelo knew.  It was a secret and a joke between them.  Maybe a bond between them.

In any case, Sam’s performance that fifth grade day formed and consolidated his reputation among the Italian gangs:  “Don’t mess with Sam.”  And it wasn’t just that Sam might hurt someone.  It was because his willingness to fight made him one of them.  An honorary Italian.

The membership bought him years and years of cover.  It didn’t matter if he talked with girls or that he was an egghead—that’s what kids who studied and went to the “advanced” classes were called.  They kidded him about that but what they were really saying was, “That’s just Sam.  What can you do?”  They didn’t even seem to mind that, even adopted him as their pet egghead, though, with the exception of Angelo, Sam didn’t spend his free time with them.  The adoption was symbolic.

By junior high school, they were together on the football and basketball teams.  No problem being teammates.  That was part of the code that guys lived by.  The teams were like another gang and in that place, Sam and the Italian boys were joined at the hip.

But looking back, Sam was pretty sure it was The Fight—way back in fifth grade—that  made his reputation.  He was OK.  He was tough.

For years, maybe decades, that agreement gave him a sense of security.  As an adult, he’d meander through tough city streets feeling safe.  He wasn’t a fighter and couldn’t really defend himself against street kids, who practiced the martial arts every day.  And outsiders might say that he wasn’t that strong, though Sam thought he was.  It wasn’t until he was about 45, when a friend who was a Tae Kwon Do expert told Sam that he wouldn’t stand a chance with a practiced fighter that Sam actually let that reality in.  But even then, he still felt protected somehow by the verdict of the Italian gang in 1954.

With college, Sam’s hair began a circuitous path, possibly in search of the strength he had known as a youth.  During college, it got longer—and longer still during graduate school.  That led to years of long and kinky hair, what was then called a jewfro.  The Jewfro, in particular, earned his wife’s resounding approval.  But even the jewfro eventually fell to shorter hair.  Middle age brought the type of cut that could be brushed and given a part.  That was an intermediary stage.  With each few years, Sam’s grew shorter and shorter until it culminated in its present day buzz cut, which was a short as it could be without making him bald.

When his haircut is complete, he glances at the mirror, squares his shoulders, and energetically walks out of the shop to his “muscle car,” a gray Toyota Camry.  .

 

The Old Man, the Young Boy and the Bomb in the Supermarket

If you look carefully, if you ignore that one is about 80 and the other 5, that one is almost 6 foot and the other not yet 4 foot tall, they look almost the same.  At least if you watch them from behind, holding hands, and walking across the parking lot.  There’s something about the slouch of their shoulders, their heads held high, and the easy way they walked.  You just knew that they were related.

That day, they were wandering the Whole Food aisles, currently checking the produce section, noting the bright reds and yellows of the peppers, smelling the garlic, and wondering about the names of the leafy greens.  “There isn’t much red in that red leaf lettuce,” five year old Isaac commented.  “I think they should find another name.”  The Old Man nodded his assent.  They marveled at the size of the melons.

“That one must be 50 pounds,” Isaac exulted.

“Could be,” said the Old Man.

Then they came to the coffee aisle.  From long experience, they knew that this would be the culmination of their journey.  One by one, they sniffed the various beans.  “What do you think about these Italian beans,” asked the Old Man?  “How about the Morning Blend?  The Costa Ricans seem a little weak to me.  What about you, Isaac?”  Isaac was excited by their test runs but he was also onto his grandpa.  He knew that the Old Man liked French Roast best.  So he carefully modulated his responses to the others, building to an exuberant affirmation.

“Grandpa, the French Roast is by far the best.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you kidding, Grandpa.  No contest.”

“I think so, too,” said the Old Man, incongruously hoping that Isaac would someday grow into a French Roast devotee.

The Old Man had a long history with supermarkets.  For reasons he couldn’t fully explain, they made him happy.  He wasn’t a foodie, after all; far from it.  He didn’t cook, either.  He liked restaurants as a place for intimate conversation and hardly cared about the quality of the food, itself.  OK, he cared a little, but it was companionship, not food that drew him there.  Even when he was alone, he loved supermarkets.

As he and Isaac continued their meanderings through the produce section, he remembered those wonderful days with Nathan, his son and Isaac’s father.  As a young man, he so enjoyed lifting Nathan into the seat of the big shopping carts and zipping around the aisles.  Nathan would giggle uncontrollably as his dad let the cart go by itself and, just as it was about to crash into the cans of peas, catch him, save him.  Later, Nathan would smile that sheepish smile of his and wave at passers by.  They would wave back—“So cute,” they’d tell the young father—and then look admiringly at him.  It was 1972 and there weren’t lots of men wheeling shopping carts in those days.  Even fewer with little children.

Assuming he was reading the women’s eyes correctly, he knew he was seen as a hero—one of the few times in his life that he would ever achieve that exalted status. Those supermarket adventures were some of the happiest moments of his life.

By the time Nathan was four months old, his mother and the Old Man had divorced.  Since his mother was not interested in taking care of an infant—or anyone else—he had taken on the role of mother and father.  He certainly hadn’t planned it; nor had he prepared.  He couldn’t remember a single time when, as a boy, he had taken care of his baby sister.  That is, until she was about four or five and he ten.  Then they had played together and he felt responsible for her.

He felt responsible and profoundly attached to Nathan from the moment he was born.  Yes, he was a pretty traditional guy with expectations of freedom and support.  But Nathan was a fact.  He needed someone to hold him and feed him.  He did it.  There was nothing noble or even particularly generous about a young father stepping in.  That’s what he would tell people.  “It was just…  What else was there to do

————————————————————–

But let me get back to my story. The old man and his grandson had wandered back to the produce section where they were going to buy some baby cucumbers, lettuce, and peppers for this evening’s salad.  When they arrived, it seemed quieter than usual.  Without knowing why, the Old Man and Isaac found themselves whispering.  Then, as if on cue, there was a huge explosion at the other end of the store.  It was deafening and the billowing smoke made it hard to see.

A cascade of potatoes spilled onto the floor and tripped them up.  As they fell, the Old man said “Let’s stay down here.”

Isaac’s eyes were wide with wonder and fear.  “On the ground, Grandpa?”

“Yes.  Let’s hide under these shelves, just in case there is another explosion.”

“Was it a bomb, Grandpa”?

“I think so.”

“Will the bad people find us?” Isaac asked.

“I don’t think so, Isaac,” said the Old Man.  Not that he was so sure.  There could be crazy people with guns, with assault rifles, for all he knew.  Like everybody else in America, he’d seen enough slaughter on TV to know what was possible.  He knew that the random assassins that now roamed American streets cared nothing for young children or old men.  He could only hope that he and Isaac were hidden enough to be safe.

From their hideout, Isaac and the Old Man heard people screaming, shrill with anger and pain—and rage.  It seemed like everyone was mad at someone else.  Even from their hideout, you could hear that people were running for safety and sometimes shoving others out of their way.  But you could also hear people tending to the injured:  “Just stay down; I’ll get help.”  And “It’ll be alright.  Breathe.  That’s it, nice and slow.  We’ll get you out of here.”  Strangers helped and held one another.

Soon there were sirens outside and the sound of professional sounding men ordering others to walk slowly and to keep moving away from the store.  That’s when Isaac piped in, his voice no longer tremulous:

“I think we’re safe now, Grandpa.”

“I do, too, Isaac, but we’re going to stay here a little longer.  I want to make extra sure that there aren’t any more bombs or bad people out there.  We’ll know it’s time when policemen come and tell us so.”

As much as Isaac wanted to see what was going on, he remained still and quiet, folded into the Old Man’s arms.  And the Old Man, much as he yearned for the All Clear call from the rescue team, cherished the closeness of the moment.

For the eternity that turned out to be twenty minutes, they waited in their vegetable cave until policemen rushed through the store, ushering them out, and assuring them that there was no more danger.  During that entire time, Isaac never let go of the Old Man.  But his eyes seemed clear and he craned his neck to see as much as possible from their hiding place atop the potatoes and beneath the mushrooms.  You couldn’t tell if he was more frightened or excited.  This was an adventure they couldn’t have cooked up.  It was horrible but the Old Man was grateful to have seen it through with his boy.

After emerging from their hiding place, they followed the policemen’s instructions, not stopping to gawk or talk, and walked directly to their car.  Fearing that Isaac’s parents might have learned about the bomb on the internet or the radio, the Old Man called to reassure them that they had come through the horror without injury and without any obvious signs of trauma.

Fortunately, they hadn’t known where The Old Man had taken Isaac.  Every week, he and Isaac traipsed all over the city, exploring one new place after another and traveling the Red Line rails as much as possible.  So Isaac’s parents hadn’t worried at all.

Hearing the news, though, they wanted him home right away.  The Old man understood.  He would have wanted Isaac close, too.  He would have needed the reassurance.  They headed home.

The Old Man drove home slowly, while Isaac peppered him with question after question.

“Who did that, Grandpa?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe we can find out on the news—when we get you home.”

“Did a lot of people get hurt?”  The Old Man had been able to shield Isaac from the medics and the stretchers that had filled the far side of the store.  So Isaac hadn’t seen the torn bodies, had barely heard the wailing families next to the ambulances.

Still, the Old Man felt the need to be honest.  So he said simply and without elaboration: “I think so, Isaac.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t really know, but there are some people who are crazy and some people who are so angry that they want to hurt others.”

“I don’t feel that way.”

“I know you don’t, Isaac, and I’m proud of you for that.”

“I’m really mad at the bad guys, though.”

“Me too.”

Once home, Isaac couldn’t stop telling his parents, who had both gotten there before their wartime veterans, about the explosion, where they hid, and what they did.  They held him.  They cried a little.  They were grateful without words.

After a while, the Old Man decided the family needed their moment, needed their privacy, and he set out for home.  As he drove, he felt a profound sense of loneliness and loss.  Even though it was the right thing to leave.  Even though he was grateful to have survived the bomb and to protect his grandson.  Even so, he wasn’t ready to let Isaac go.  He began to shake a little.  He ached for Isaac’s presence.  And his tears slowly made their way from his eyes to his chin.

 

 

Playing God

It’s hard to know how well even the most intimate seeming friends and lovers know one another.  Here’s a story that is as idiosyncratic as they come but maybe there’s a part of it that you can identify with.

Years ago, friends invited me to a play.  Or that’s what they said.  I’m pretty sure they just wanted me to meet the woman who directed the play.  Let’s call her Sally.  Sally was very attractive.  Her work and her world seemed exotic.  It had been a while since I had ventured among artists.  And I took the bait.

The play, itself, had been written by Sally’s boyfriend, that is, her soon-to-be ex boyfriend.  We’ll call him Bob.  At the center of the play was a female robot.  She was very beautiful, winsome and willowy, with long blond hair, dressed in a cinch waist dress that emphasized all of her endowments.  Most important of all, this human-looking robot happily did whatever her “lover” ordered.  When he wanted her company she was there.  When he wanted to be alone, she almost magically disappeared—without a fuss.  She was sexual when he needed that, maidenly when it suited him, motherly when that was the order of the day.  Who could ask for anything more.

This was 1970 and, even then, I knew it was a thinly veiled feminist tale.  Not bad for a guy to write.  But Sally thought otherwise.  She told us that there was no satire here.  This was exactly what Bob wanted in a relationship.  Which was why she had to leave the relationship.  Pretty soon, I learned, or thought I learned, that I would be an alternative model, a man who wouldn’t order Sally around, a man who would take an interest in her, not just how she could serve me.  That fit my self image so well that, like a new actor on the stage, I simply accepted the role.

I don’t remember if Sally and I reached common ground on Bob’s intentions but we did see eye to eye on other things.  We began seeing one another, eventually became a couple, founded a little urban commune, and, after a year or two broke up.  The commune that we had formed was rapidly transformed by Sally.  She had become a player in one of the spiritual orders that had sprung up everywhere in Cambridge during the 70’s.   Soon young followers flocked to our doorsteps, some for short and others for indefinite stays.  They hadn’t exactly been invited but they somehow knew they were welcome.  Sally certainly welcomed them and I, known then as Daddy Ari, presided.  To put it more crudely, I paid the rent and handed out advice.  Before I knew it, we had become a spiritual commune.

Both of us had come off of rough marriages and the commune was meant to serve as a buffer between us, a way for us to be close but not too close.  The strategy worked all too well, and we split up within two years of the spiritual conquest at our commune.   I was relieved but also amazed.  I hadn’t realized that a spiritual practice was so central to her life.  I hadn’t taken that directions seriously enough.  When she had tried to convert me, which was often, I pushed away, first gently, then less so, and, eventually, with a harshness that surprised and upset me.  I used to say that the only way that Sally would accept the authenticity of our differences was for me to get mean, but I hated myself when that happened.

I should add that I had such an overweening belief in my own powers of reason and persuasion that I convinced myself that I would be able to convert her.  She would understand that differences were good.  A pluralistic universe was the world at its best.  I explained my own Existential philosophy and budding Buddhist beliefs.  All to no avail.  My failure didn’t really shake my belief in myself, though.  It just convinced me that her defenses were impregnable.  And, of course, it didn’t occur to me that mine were, too.

Our break up seemed amicable.  We were, after all, amicable people.  She according to her Sufi code and me according to my psychologically-based values.  We shared the sadness of it all, though neither of us was too sad.  Sally continued to nurture her community and I went off to another commune, this time filled with urban intellectuals who I imagined would be more simpatico.  They weren’t.  My four year old daughter summed up what eventually became our shared assessment this way: “They be’s mean to me.”  But that’s a story for another time.

A couple of years later, Sally invited me to a theatrical extravaganza, a “cosmic celebration,” that she had created and staged in Boston’s Armory.  At the center of the armory she had used scaffolding to build a multi-level structure.  At the first level, there were saints, at the next, angels, and so forth, though I can’t really remember all of the gradations, based on their nearness to divine realization.  There must have been a hundred players.  At the top, sat God.

Sally asked me if I would be willing to sit atop the structure, atop the moral and spiritual universe, and play God.  Since I didn’t believe in God—and Sally knew this very well—I was a little skeptical about the request and asked what lines I would have.  What would God say?  “Nothing,” said Sally.  “Your job would be to sit in divine silence.”  While there is something appealing about “divine silence,” I declined the role.  Still, I remembered how uncompromising I had been when we were together and worried that I was being a bad sport.

After some time and considerable reflection, it occurred to me that this silent, beatific role was the one she had wanted me to play all along.  Wise, mute, and endorsing.  She had listened to my psychological insights, my philosophical ramblings, my political rants, but she had probably only tolerated them, maybe enjoyed them once in a while.  I wanted communication, respect, maybe even to be known.  I wanted the power of my ideas to win the day.  But, again, I had missed the point.  Had I wanted her to be a robot?  God, I hope not.  But it’s hard to avoid the realization that I did want to mold her to a vision of what my good woman should be.  Or, at least, how the woman for me could be.

And I began to see what Sally wanted, too:  A strong, overarching presence, godlike and watching over her.  Who wouldn’t want that.  At the time, I didn’t understand, no less sympathize.  I just knew that the imagery that informed her man made me uneasy.  So I returned to my distance.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure that we never knew one another, never knew why we really came together, and certainly didn’t understand why we had broken up.