Once or maybe more if you’re lucky, you meet a woman who sees you, really sees you, and likes what she sees. She is older than you, more in shape, when you are a sprachle of all the right inner organs but very unsure about how to hold it all together, floundering basically. And you meet her, welcoming, gracious her, and you talk over soup and awkwardness, yours, not hers, although she clocks it, and you. It is and was a remarkable moment, that first see me soup thing. I was 24 ish, 3 babies, so very unsure of myself, so cold in the big adventure we had bought into, so overwhelmed with motherhood and more, the stress of marriage in what I saw as extreme conditions. I remember her invite. Come to Lunch. Such a beckoning. I knew she was warm, or would make it so. She lived in a castle and that doesn’t mean jackshit but hers was warm. We enjoyed many soups over the years, many welcomes, many salads, many shares on the rights and wrongs of life, among flowers, she loved them, fragrance, romance, dance, all these were her.

She is gone now, breathed her last. There are many forgets in my long years. She isn’t one. She turned me around, said, ‘You need to be yourself” I remember laughing. Who is that? She smiled that smile, all eyes and chuckle and said, Go Find. I was 24ish. I’m 72 now. Her words still wake me in the morning, and I still respond.

Rest my beautiful friend.