Finding Teri
But for my dearest companion, Serendipity, I might still be trying to fight my mathematician’s voice or finding fault inside of me. But I had already said “yes” to joining Facebook in December. Many people from my current home town asked me to become virtual friends as well as real ones. Gradually I found a few folks from my high school years that belong in my current life too.
After searching through the debris of Scotty's life story and finding broken mirrors, I became curious about who I really was in the journals that I no longer had from the time I moved out . One particular person came to mind whose vision of myself was trustworthy. The day came when I decided to type in his name on Facebook. There is was, with a photo that to my mind's eye was unmistakably he.
What I write here is private and below the radar, but only the dead have their real names revealed. I'll call this old friend “No”. “No” and I knew each other short months He was the one who helped me keep my promise to myself, to leave my family of origin, before the end of my first semester of college. This was months, but an eon, before my mathematician and I met. It would take me some 30 years to recognize that the simple sketch of "No's" story had indelibly informed my life. His vision of the world and of my essential self, helped me experience that the world could be a good place. I think the shadow his life cast on mine made it only too plain that my mathematician could never be a lifelong mate, even before I could trust my instincts to act on that knowledge.
I am almost positive that reaching back to “No” after 32 years of no contact, has helped me reclaim the young woman I really have wanted nothing to do with—for her indecisiveness. I have found myself forgiving myself for my misperceptions of her. I’ve needed “No”’s voice in order to stop fighting my inner critic.
Through him, or rather, through my courage to ask his confidence, I am seeing myself through new eyes. Our correspondence contains so much a meeting of minds that I find myself having a renewed respect for myself.
I have been fortunate, blessed really, that I was motivated to do this work by the spirits of two important people in my life, who are now gone. Maia and my Uncle Wally.
ln corresponding with "No", I have found genuine friendship, stripped of illusions. In recognizing all this good in him, I see, from a whole new vista, that the same good was always there in me.
I am restored in faith and in enthusiasm, for my work as a writer and storyteller.
What EA Is...and Is Not
10 years ago
1 comment:
Memories built over 32 years are typically fragmented glimpses, with the exception of the occasional major event. I've had many experiences and met many people, and for the most part they are fragments. The more rare memory is the one that persists through time, for reasons that are hard to qualify, or set against the standard one has for pigeon-holing meaningfulness. I met a young girl 32 years ago, and she told me her name was Teri. Six months or so later, I pretty much disappeared but Teri was one of those rare memories that persisted to this day. I realize now, that pealing away time to revisit Teri, is kind of like pealing an onion and discovering a pearl. 32 years from now, I imagine re-discovery of Teri to be another persistent and gratifying memory.
No
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