I don't really know what she thought of me. I was too tall and too thin and a confused mess of cowboy moved to the city getting high with the freaks and smart enough to hang with the geeky smart kids but out of control enough to be more at home with any and all of the trouble-makers on campus. She and I would talk at school sometimes and occasionally after school I would walk to her house and we would listen to music and take ourselves and life way too seriously until finally one or the other of us would finally say something to remind us that life is just funny. She had to know I was smitten and I always knew she wasn't but we were friends.
Over the months and years our friendship softened and we talked less and less.
We still saw each periodically. At school, at the park or out shopping, we would bump into each other and say hello and as is often the case those moments awakened a bittersweet melancholy. Angie was always Angie- to me she never seemed to change. She was always cute and funny and socially graceful. At 14 she had a spunky personality that by 20 had matured into a sparkly bright and engaging personality. The woman she grew into fulfilled all the promise of the girl she was.
After we went off to college years went by and I didn't see Angie. I wondered how she was and where she was but I didn't follow up.
A friend of mine was attending graduate school at the University and between classes he was sitting on the lawn and began talking to a cute young woman there. They talked and laughed and she had a wonderful sparkly and engaging personality. He admits that he was smitten and he knew that she was not. Over the semester the met regularly and became friends and as friends sometimes do they began to explore who they may know in common and realized they both knew me- yeah!
"How is Mark?" she asked- and then . . . "and what is his current incarnation?"
A service brat becomes a beach kid in Florida became a cowboy in New Mexico became a trouble making long haired freaky kid musician became a Jesus Freak became a fitness fellow became a series of yuppie fellows a husband a father a divorced single dad an executive a business owner a realtor a single man who is full circle flat broke living alone in a city with no friends or family with a dog and a question:
"How is Mark?"
" . . . and what is his current incarnation?"
2 comments:
I've known some of those Incarnations of Mark over the years; from the tall, pensive teenager who was wise beyond his years, to the generous neighbor and hardworking businessman, to the awesome dad of an awesome daughter.
I was drawn to you from the first time I saw you, all 17 lanky red-headed years of you. You were a half decade more grown up than I, nearly half again my age, far beyond my own social level. Yet despite the great expanse of years and maturity that separated us, I was still drawn to you.
Perhaps it was a sense of kinship born of being a fellow member of the too-tall, too-thin, awkward and gangly tweenage brother/sisterhood. Perhaps it was the incredible depth of intelligence that I sensed you kept mostly hidden in order to better "fit in." Maybe it was just because when we were both in the same room, we both looked more normal, and I so desperately longed for "normal" (whatever that was). Or maybe it was the way we both hovered on the fringes of our respective social groups, accepted yet somehow isolated, more observers than true participants.
Maybe it was because sometimes when I slipped away from the social melee into the quiet darkness for some time to myself, I would find you already there, wrapped in the shadows, off in some distant world of your own, and as you watched the moon and I watched you, I knew somehow deep inside that despite our different ages and experiences, the inexplicable pain in your soul mirrored my own.
Or maybe something inside of me knew that someday, when the chasm of years that separated us had narrowed and then dwindled to insignificance, a message would appear in my CompuServe inbox that said, "'Twas Brillig..." Perhaps somehow I sensed that you were to be the single enduring constant in my gypsy life of new places, faces, and friends.
I've seen you lost, found, content, lonely, rich, poor, happy, pensive, boisterous, and withdrawn. I've seen your layers peeled away, revealing a new aspect of you with each painful metamorphosis. In your various incarnations, though you may not have always known it, you have been in turn a role model, an inspiration, a comfort, a ray of sunshine in my e-mail, and a healing presence in my own times of pain.
The Mark of your current incarnation is, I think, the best one yet. The years have refined and strengthened you, worn down the rough spots and polished the sharp edges. You are stronger, tougher, deeper, wiser, and more honest and real than ever before.
If I close my eyes I can still see you out in the moonlit night; only now there is quiet strength where once there was despair. Now as you gaze up at the moon, I see calm knowing and serene acceptance in your eyes, where once there were only unanswered questions. And now, in that quiet peaceful place, I no longer watch in secret from the shadows before creeping silently away. Now you know I am there, and we sit together in the light of the moon and talk about life, the universe, and everything. And life is still hard, and often painful, but always good.
Mark is doing fine, Angie. You would be pleased.
:)
Time for a new post. Here, I'll help: You've been memed! Seven Things
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