The Meet Up in Everyday Ramblings

I spent three hours this morning over at the pond filled Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden with a group of folks from the bird stuff store I go to. This all puffed up Great Blue Heron was so gorgeous in the damp foggy light and silver looking pond. It was all excellent distraction. It was worth getting up early for.

Not that I slept much last night. My brain was churning.

Monday afternoon Mr. Fine China called and left a message on my phone asking if I wanted to go to a Christmas concert at our premier downtown Portland concert hall by the Choir and Orchestra from Pacific Lutheran University (the school one of his twin boys graduated from with an RN last year). They have a highly respected music program. The concert was the next night. He said he was planning on taking his son and then thought I might enjoy it more.

I called him back and we talked on the phone for the first time in somewhere between eight and ten years. Mostly logistics, it was well below freezing and ice was a real possibility.

He offered to pick me up but I wanted to walk if I could. The frigid weather has made it impossible to stay out for more than a few minutes until just, well, yesterday. I did walk and I enjoyed the heck out of being out and moving around and anticipating it all nervously.

He looks good for a guy who is 60. He’s taken care of himself. A bit smaller and his features are sharper but he has been grieving and making arrangements for his mother’s funeral so my guess would be he isn’t sleeping much.

He told me in very specific detail about being with his mother as she passed and I felt honored that he felt comfortable sharing this intimacy with me. The concert was good, the young folks healthy and gorgeous and enthusiastic. We were asked to rise on numerous occasions and sing carols. I remember them! He was solicitous and courtly. On the way out we ran into two cheerful older women from his home church choir and man could I feel the heat of their interest in me. :)

He brought me home and I gave him the Cantus CD that has a song on it called Wanting Memories

The song is by Ysaye Barnwell from Sweet Honey and the Rock and is about losing one’s mother. She is a Unitarian and came to visit my church a few years ago. I had listened to it last weekend and was wondering if he knew about them or the song. He didn’t. But he loved the song.

He is going to use it and one other on the compilation in the service he is putting together for next week. In South Dakota. She wanted to be buried between her parents. Imagine the arrangements for that in the very heart of winter! A backhoe is involved.

I also took him through a short shoulder neck yoga practice as he has said he had been getting tension headaches. And we chatted a bit. At one point he held me and told me with the yoga and all that I looked great. At this point I was up way past my bedtime and I had worked a ridiculous amount of days straight. I thanked him and sent him home.

He posted a link to the Tiny Desk Concert above on his Facebook page and if I may express an opinion here, it was not fully appreciated by his friends. Oh well. It had meaning for him. That’s what matters.

Then I didn’t hear from him for three days. I finally emailed yesterday and in a direct but indirect way indicated that I would be interested in seeing him again. He said not until after the funeral next Friday. I honestly don’t know what his current relationship status is but he had his hand gently resting on my back in public in the aisle after the concert.

And last night I couldn’t sleep.

The endless attempts at breaking up and not quite getting it right for months were going on at the same time I was establishing my oh so tempestuous relationship with Mr. Finch. And I miss that relationship terribly right now. And then there was the construct Mr. Fine China, my muse, the one I wrote poems about and longed for but didn’t exist. Last night in my brain they were all in there. Whew!

Going birding this morning (and not working) and then having a lively lunch with Kes who drove up here for one skein of yarn provided wonderful and much needed diversion. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble sleeping tonight at all. Hope not.