In Appreciation of All Things Beautiful

Once in a while, a grownup walks into a child’s life and changes it forever in wonderful, meaningful ways.  But because the child is just a child, she simply can’t know how important that grownup is; not until she herself is a grownup and the tides of time have carried everyone forward… and apart.

This is the story of someone special who came into my life when I was young, how she drifted away in the tide, and how the forces of nature and circumstance–by some miracle–brought her back to me.

I grew up in a quiet neighborhood in Orinda, a bedroom community east of San Francisco.  It was a neighborhood in transition; most of the homes had been built in the 1940s and 1950s.  By the early Eighties, many of the homes were still occupied by their original owners; elderly folks whose children had moved away.

My parents were among the first in a wave of younger couples to move in, but there weren’t many kids for me and my sister, Kate, to play with.  In fact, there were so few children in the area that the local elementary school had closed and we had to take a bus to a neighboring school.  After school we were left to our own devices, children of working parents that we were.  We wandered around the neighborhood amusing ourselves in other people’s gardens and digging up moss in the swampy gutter that ran along our street.  When we were feeling particularly adventurous, we would sneak into the backyard of a senile old woman whose rotting swimming pool was alive with wriggling tadpoles.  It was thrilling.

And then Kathy moved in.  Kathy was technically a grownup, but since she was renting a room in Mr. and Mrs. Ward’s house down the street and had no children or husband of her own, Kate and I (ages six and eight) figured she couldn’t be much older than we were.  In fact, she was forty-four.  But we didn’t know and we didn’t care.  She had soft brown hair and a lovely way of speaking that sounded like singing.  And she played the piano like nothing we had ever heard before.

Indeed, she was a piano teacher who was staying with the Wards while she looked for an apartment big enough for her piano.  Since she didn’t have a nine-to-five job like our parents, Kathy always seemed to be home. Which meant Kate and I spent a lot of time in her company just following her around, our brindle boxer in tow, babbling on and on about nothing.  She sometimes made us lunch and we had more than a few little adventures together, one involving a stray donkey that turned up in the neighborhood one bright and sunny Saturday morning.  That story demands an entire post of its own, but suffice it to say… Kathy was a big part of our lives for about a year and we loved her.

But she eventually found a place to live and moved out. I don’t remember when she left and I don’t remember saying good bye.  And not long after she left, my parents moved us to Los Angeles.  I was soon a SoCal pre-teen with more pressing things to think about than Kathy.

I moved back to Northern California for college and I occasionally wondered what ever happened to Kathy.  But I never looked her up, I don’t know why.  You know how it goes, you get so busy.  Too busy for the important things.

But about a month ago, 23 years after my sister and Kathy and I found that rogue donkey wandering the streets of Orinda, my phone rang on a cool Sunday morning while I was at brunch with a friend.  It was a local number I didn’t recognize, so I let it go to voice mail.  I listened to the message later that afternoon; it was a political campaign call.  A random volunteer calling numbers from a list.

I was about to press delete when I heard the caller say her name, just before she urged me one last time to vote.  And when she said her name, it clicked.  It was Kathy.  I listened to the message again and I was sure of it.  There was no mistaking her voice, a voice that was talking but sounded like it was singing.  She had no idea who she was calling, but I knew exactly who was calling me.

I tried calling the number back but the mailbox was full.  I called again and again that day and the next, but to no avail.  Eager to connect with her and confirm what I wanted so badly to believe was true, I Googled her.  Sure enough, I found Kathy in the Bay Area teaching piano at a prestigious music school.  I called the school and they gave me her email address.  I wrote to her.  I waited.

Kathy wrote me back and confirmed she was indeed the Kathy I thought she was.  She was so pleased I had written.  We talked on the phone a few days later, for nearly an hour.  We set a date for lunch.

She’s in her late sixties now, and I’m thirty-one.  But she looked the same!  She talked the same way, she laughed the same way.  I, on the other hand, looked quite different at 31 than she remembered me at eight.  I had to bring photos of myself and Kate as younger children so she could remember us.  We ate matzo ball soup at Saul’s Deli in Berkeley.  She brought a paper bag full of Flavor King pluots for dessert.  It was a great reunion.

I don’t have a recipe for this post, just a photo of some dahlias from my garden.  I guess a photo of roses would have been more appropriate, so I could have ended with something about how important it is to stop and smell them.  But I don’t have roses in my garden, just dahlias this year.

So roses or dahlias, an old friend, a long lost neighbor.  Your mother, your father.  Your sister.  Your fourth grade teacher.  Whoever deserves to be recognized and appreciated for the beauty they’ve brought to your life… go do it.  Don’t leave it to the tides of time to give you another chance.