Note #1 -- a thank you
I'm starting a series of notes/letters that I never intend to send, because I can't, for one reason or another. Here's the first one:
My first memory of you is the time you came to class in a cowboy hat. It was the day of your poetry presentation, and you were going to recite Al Purdy, but I don't remember which poem anymore. The semester after that, I started bumping into you in the mornings, taking those long bus-rides to school together. Although I had never met your family, I could feel your love for them, particularly for your little brother. It was a fierce, all encompassing love. I also remember your obsession with war and war stories. Your eyes lit up every time you talked about a new book you had read, and as you recounted the scenes to me, I saw such fire behind your expressiveness. I could feel the heat behind every word. You had invited me to those English Society meetings; I went only because I knew it was important to you that I went. I looked for you when I went on to pursue my Education degree. I was so sure you would be sitting there, in the quiet stillness, in the corner of a dimly lit classroom in September, watching the students stream in. And I was so sure that the year since our last bus ride would all but disappear. We would merely start talking again, and you'd catch me up on your latest reads. We wouldn't ask what had happened in that intervening year, why we had disappeared from each other's life, because it wouldn't have mattered. But you weren't there, and I've never seen you again. If I could talk to you, I'd tell you that I'm living your dream. In my mind's eye, you're living it too. As I type away, way up here in this small town, perhaps you're somewhere wrapping up your day's lessons, straightening the piles of papers on your desk. I hope you still have that spark, that fierce love for people, for justice, for life. Sometimes, when I have a particularly difficult day in my classroom, I try to emulate your energy, your wonder. And sometimes, not always, it works. That's your everlasting gift to me, and I thank you for that.
You're living your dream too, you know. You may not realize it, but you're living with such honesty and poise, and that's all anyone could ever dream to do.
ReplyDeleteThis is it - a book - entitled - Thank you Cards waiting to Send---
ReplyDeleteeveryone has the quilt of unsend thankyou cards. They will be touched by your insightful and poetic expressions in your cards that you send to all those that still are in your mind and for which you are grateful for them touching your life in some way
And speaking of that - I think I will take this opportunity to Thank YOU for being a wonderful influence in my life. My first thoughts of you is - "oh my she looks so small - personally and physically. I wonder if we will possibly get along?" Since then as you unfolded - the many deep layers, I came to be in awe of your intelligence, gentleness, your incredible skills and talents. I had never been friends with someone so unconfident (or unsure of yourself and what you really wanted or were). I thankyou for the simplest of things, like learning that not all people can cook. Another, but not a simple thing, I thank you for is showing me how to say no to people, when you don't have a comfort zone with them. I just didn't get you, and was frustrated that you wouldn't want to go out and experience life. Little did I realize you were just experiencing life from your point of view and in your way. I realized from you, due to your persistent manner in protecting yourself by saying NO to what you didn't want to do, that not everyone sees or wants the world the same way I do. I wouldn't have choosen you as a friend, at first I would have thought - I have nothing in common with this person - but as we became involved in each other's lives - you became a friend. I had the opportunity to get to know a different type of person. A person that opened my eyes to others that are creative and sensitive - so different from most of my friends. I learned to appreciate quiet moments, poetry, cats, balance, and the need for balance and quality in people (like a neat tidy bedroom). So I thank you for being you - even over above all the strong pulls of Inuvik. I thank you for being in Inuvik, otherwise I think I would have been sucked into the big black hole of a lot of negative things which seems to gather in Inuvik. You kept reminding me of the quiet qualities in life.
ReplyDeleteYou are quality, thank you.
Thank you for sharing yourself with this blog.. I know so much of you and your views .... I rarely email you anymore simply because I connect with you in this blog... I need to start a blog, I imagine it must be therapeutic, but unfortunately I am not in touch with words enough to be able to describe what I am feeling. Thank you for continually amazing me with your insightfulness of your world.
ReplyDeleteAnd I want to thank you too. You are amazing, and the very fact that you would never admit it just makes you that much more amazing. I do wish you'd see that in yourself though. I love your music. I love our comfortable silences, as well as the times when you reveal your mind with such passion and vehemence. You really do have a passion for goodness in the world, more than anyone I've ever met. Not a single person who has spent time with you could deny the way you quietly touch everyone with your insight and caring.
ReplyDelete