The sun had found that place just right, between the limbs and leaves of one tree and the next, guaranteeing I would bake in its glory. Sweat wasn't what I came here for. I looked over to my right, and in the nice cool shade there was another bench swing, inviting me to abandon its sister for it's more welcoming embrace. I took an easy, deep draw on my Ghurka, gathered myself up and trundled the 30 feet to my new venue in the shade. I had missed this one as I drove into the park, looking for a quiet place to sit, think, and enjoy my cigar in solitude.
Its front edge was chipped, weathered and broken, and it sagged under me, but she settled and I found a nice quiet rhythm. A sigh, and a puff, and soon I was returned to my hypnotic revelry, watching the people go by, listening to the soft modern jazz from down the lake where a group of young people were coming together for a barbeque. The late afternoon was waning into evening, the hawks circling over the water seeking their evening's meal, and people from all sorts of places walking the asphalt path that wound around the Little Bonita Lake. I watched them, the older woman who wasn't a Mennonite, but dressed like one with hair tight in a bun, meeting up with her husband by the big boulder, he in shirtleeves, buttoned to the neck, suspenders and belt, with her bottle of water, not quite the walking kind. She sipped, they chatted, she returned to the path and he to his picnic table. The group of young, genorously proportioned black women walking together, the nature of their animated banter lost as they talked over one another, one louder than the next to make their point. A group of beautiful machines, rumbling beneath their riders passed in single file behind me, six or seven, shiny, well kept classics. I puffed, rocked, and watched. I looked for a young couple, he the tall athletic sort, she a smaller probably-had-been-athletic-but-had-let-that-go-some-time-ago, alternating walking, jogging, until she finally sat on a bench, far on the other side of the lake. I could see them as small things, he jogging back to where she had sought respite. A middle aged man in black shorts passed into my view from left to right, t-shirt in hand, glistening in sweat as he walked his cool down. I had not seen him until he was passing, having gotten caught up in watching the young couple across the lake. Two young women with their McDonald's in hand, one clearly a salad, the other clearly not, took up residence at a picnic table off to my right beneath the trees. This stage, this ever evolving diorama, was distracting me from the thoughts that occupied my mind these days. I wonder what drama their lives are unfolding? Surely it was unlike my own. And that fascinates me.
I am lucky. So very lucky. I am here, on this park swing, smoking a good cigar, belly full of local barbeque ribs and mighty fine beans washed down with sweet southern tea, taking a break from a job my good friend gave me some 4 years ago now, just to make some extra money to add to my already fairly extraordinary salary from my regular work. Nevermind I was leaving that regular job for a new one, and that had seen some stresses, I am one very lucky man, at this crossroad. I have a wife who, while she thinks she loves me really is just used to me, but that's okay, I'm pretty used to her too, and the love we share is its own thing, no less attached to itself. Its what love becomes as it grows old. A couple of teenaged kids who were turning out to be two pretty nice people. My life has been filled with extraordinary, ordinary, and strange people, all who in their way gave my life its palette. There were the good ones, but also the petty ones, whose life drama played into mine and cast me into a turbulent sea, each time to be pulled out by true Samaritans, who set me to rights, and from there my life proceeded even better than before. Every single time... My life has been enchanted. That has been my greatest fortune. With each turn of the screw, each seemingly tragic end, has come some new, wonderful beginning. Not because I am gifted in my own right, but because I am gifted by the people who care about me, some who actually knew me, others who did not but were good people in their own lives. I am who I am today, a decent ordinary man making his way through his extraordinary life, because of what I have learned from each of them, the good, the bad, and how I have added them to my being. I am where and who I am today because I have made good choices, but mostly because those choices were there for me to choose from, brought by those pople who shaped me. I have lived all around the world, seen things no one has seen, things others only dream about. I am healthy, wealthy, and with each passing day, I am wiser. But more than that, I have the wonderful gift of people in my life, friends, enemies, strangers, seen and unseen, who have sculpted me.
We come into this life a block of fine quality stone. From the day of our birth we are sculpted by those around us. Some hammer away big chunks, others chisel away fine curves, and sometimes a mistake is made and a large craggy piece of us falls to the ground to shatter, forever changing us. Some of those lost peices we love and cherish, others we could do without, some is just baggage, others tthought to be essential in our minds to our shape. Some come to polish and shine us, some to judge us as beautiful or ugly from their own point of view. We are what we are, beauty and truth are in the eye of the beholder, this surely is true. When we die, we are what we are, made by the lives that have shaped us, good, not so good, some very bad. And in this life we have sculpted others, polished, shined, judged, and shattered... This is our life: life imitating art making life.
Another puff, and I see I have smoked the Ghurka down as low as I would like. I rub it into the dirt, one last look around as the sun sets, toss it into the brown steel trash can by the road, and I walk over to my car, my very nice car. Lucky, lucky me. I have no doubt that I owe everything I have to all of those I have known throughout my life, those who have scultped me, and I smile. I wonder how many people might say the same about me? But more than anything else, I am excited about the years to come, the people I will meet, come to know, those who will remain strnagers or passers through, and wonder at the enchantment we will share. Life is good. We are good. Its all good in the end.
Or I am just one helluva lucky guy...
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