For many centuries before the advent of digital smartphones with their conversation-restricting this-is-my-private-world ambiance, there was another silence-inducing pastime—the analog world of card-play, where strategy is everything, and silence is to be respected. Apparently, at this breakfast table at least, the new gives way to the very old. But at least the silence is broken by an occasional, “It’s your turn,” instead of the jangle of The Lone Ranger-themed electronic ringtone. Ahhh.
Please Use Other Entrance. Ojai, California
Glamping in our 17′ Escape trailer. Ojai, CA
Evidence of a lost civilization at Ojai, California.
We met her today at the Ojai Coffee Roasting coffee shop. She’s 82, and just finished a month-long, $20,000 intensive live-in workshop (along with four other $20,000 per person attendees) with self-help guru Byron Katie. Nope, I’ve never heard of Ms. Katie before. But for that sort of money, I’m thinking I that I have a lot of self-help to give! Our coffee-drinking friend, a Brit, met her husband in South Africa. Living in England, she refused to move back to Apartheid South Africa, so after 20 years of marriage, they divorced. She departed with $1 million of his $10 million wealth. His subsequent two wives got the rest of it, upon his death. She’s still mad about that. And, nope, I never even learned our coffee-drinking friend’s name. But I will, when she attends my new self-help seminar, now on the drafting table.
At a casual restaurant in Ojai, California tonight, a doting grandfather missed not a moment to be fully, totally immersed in his grandson’s life. For the hour that I watched him, the conversation never faltered, never lagged. A surgeon’s scalpel could not have been more precise, as he excavated his grandson’s thoughts and hopes. Near the end of the meal, the grandson left his seat to sit next to his grandfather, to share calendars together. They had big plans. With more than a touch of envy, I wondered at my own ability to follow in this grandfather’s steps, sharing life’s secrets, dreams and mysteries with my own grandchildren. Total engagement is a powerful gift.
I don’t know if the phrase “a life well-lived” is in your vocabulary yet, but I suspect at some point that thought enters us all. A young tabebuia tree stands at the edge of our patio. Without yet possessing a strong trunk, she relies upon the two poles beside her to support her until she gets stronger. The two poles are the trunks of two other once-living trees, now being used to train and bear up a new generation of trees. Perhaps, like these trees, our well-lived lives will strengthen others who will follow.
Lost to the world at The Shake Shack, Crystal Cove, CA.
Jackie, incognito NCIS, at Starbucks.
Huntington Gardens pond, San Marino, CA.
