Down Under

An old friend of mine tracked me down from high school. She was the foreign exchange student from Australis, wild and fun. Haven't talked to her in 20 yrs. She said we saw each other in London last - ohhh yeah, god, did I see her there? She had just gotten off a cruise ship where she'd been a chef and I was in Europe with my tall lanky ex-boyfriend. We met at a bar/restaurant/cafe and when he went to the bathroom I told her I was in love with two other people, a boy and a girl. I was 25. She was more interested in the boy in the bathroom - what was wrong with this one, the one right under your nose? He was a beautiful boy. I never really wanted the one right under my nose.

So 20 yrs, I had to try and rethink - did she know me before my dead ex-husband? Where was I living, what was I doing? Why did I map my life by my love affairs? While she was trekking around Zimbabwe with no electricity and using words like bloke and safari, I was living in a tiny house on a huge river in Maryland. While she was having a baby in Perth, I was in LA working on horror movies and meeting my husband. Now she's in Canada teaching art and theater to kids at her kids' school, and I'll be teaching playwriting to kids at MY kids' school. Hmm.

I never really organized my life, I better do that, huh. I just sort of followed its crazy path. And now with three kids running around, I just look for moments in the day where I can breathe, and see an ocean of silence. I am lost in it, committed. These are the busy years. I guess up there in Canade, she's breathing in a breath of cold air and doing the same thing.