Bar Chatter

Two strangers walked into a Newport bar. They scanned the room. Any empty seats? It was a September evening, still warm with a cheerful, summer vibe. Overall, the crowd was young, the women dressed in a mix of stylish stove-pipe jeans and crop tops or sundresses short enough for a flash of undies. The guys were in uniform, well, so universal were their outfits it seemed like a uniform – Oxford shirts, jeans, and All Birds.  

An attractive blond woman with a cascade of faux pearls dangling from her ears waved the strangers over and gestured to two free seats overlooking the harbor. 

The sun was low, glinting on pewter water visible between the boats docked at parallel wharves. The lightest of breezes rocked the boats and caressed bare cheeks, shoulders, and midriffs. 

The strangers settled in and were greeted by an older couple tucked close to the wall – a quieter spot perfect for people-watching. “We’re the oldest ones in the place,” said the man who introduced himself as Kostas. His face was lined, yes, but he was tan, strong, and handsome. His wife, April, was martini-happy, and giggled when Kostas mentioned ages.  

“I bet we have you beat,” said the male stranger.

“I don’t think so! We’re 80!” announced Kostas practically crowing with pride; he knew how good he looked. April put her hand to her mouth and giggled again.   

“No way!” said the strangers… and they were being honest. April, perhaps, had had a bit of “work” done, but they both looked amazing. 

Drinks were ordered and served  - Dark and Stormies with muddled mint - as conversations covered home locations, children, and travel. No politics. One never knows.

As the sky darkened, the bar party ebbed and flowed like the waters in the harbor beyond. When Gus and April stood to leave, Marty and Jim, thrilled at the openings in this crowded restaurant, eased into their stools.

Jim’s dark brows arched over sparkling eyes that spoke of a kind soul. It was not surprising to learn he worked on behalf of others researching rare cancers. Marty, his wife, hale and athletic, ran a foundation, and was, like me, a cancer survivor. With that revelation, the uncomfortable skin of being strangers was shed, and the four of us raised glasses in a toast: “To good health!”

I asked Jim if continued funding was a concern and, his expression rueful, he nodded. Marty and I locked eyes. We knew the role medical research had played in our being together that night at the bar.    

It was time for dinner, so we perused the menus, but a restaurant regular mentioned an unlisted dish: lobster ravioli with morel mushrooms in a champagne sauce… and four orders were submitted to the kitchen.  

Meanwhile, between sips of sauvignon blanc, talk turned to Marty and Jim’s weekend plans: a wedding and their son’s beach volleyball match. We contributed news of our granddaughter’s loose tooth, mastery of her two-wheeler, and our son’s family life in Switzerland. Phones were pulled from pockets and photographs shared amid hoots of laughter and coos of admiration. 

Once our dishes arrived, there was appreciative silence as delectable bites of tender ravioli, creamy sauce, and generous chunks of lobster were sampled. 

After dinner, it was time to part – this group was not one to stay late over drinks. We hugged our good-byes, grateful for this chance connection, those empty seats at the bar, and the glimpse into the fullness of every stranger’s life.  

 

 

 

    

Strangers Over a Rainbow

 

On the flight to Shannon and Dan’s wedding in Florida, we flew over a rainbow.  “Look!”  said Caitlin, the little girl sitting beside me.  “A rainbow!” 

I’d spotted Caitlin almost immediately when Dave and I arrived at La Guardia Airport in New York.  As we waited in line at Jet Blue to get our boarding passes, she caught my eye because of her outfit.  “Precocious,” I thought, and I feel sheepish admitting to being so judgmental, even of a young girl, but her black fingerless gloves and matching nail polish, camouflage pants, off-the-shoulder shirt, and bandana seemed a bit much for a freckle-faced strawberry blond of ten or so.  “Eleven,” she would later correct me.  She was accompanied by an attractive older blond woman, her grandmother, I later learned, who appeared to be flummoxed by the self-possessed girl in her care.

Once at the gate, Dave and I joyfully greeted Chris and John, long-time friends who were going to the Florida wedding as well.  We settled in to wait having heard the forecast of thunderstorms and been informed of a half-hour delay.  With surprise, I noticed that the little girl and her grandmother were seated nearby.  An attractive woman with coppery curls also drew my admiring glance.  In the eighties, I spent significant dollars hoping to coax my lifeless hair into just such body and volume.

When our flight was announced, Dave, Chris, John, and I gathered our bags and proceeded to the tube connecting the plane to the gate.  As we edged closer to the door to the plane, Dave slowed to offer a hand to a young mother – a beautiful babe of a young mother – who was grappling with several hefty bags and two small boys.  Dave is wonderful about going beyond registering a need and doing something to help where I tend to take note in a vague way and wander on.

As I wandered on, Dave grasped the biggest of the mom’s bulky bags and we inched down the aisle of the plane, Chris and John taking seats in row 10, as we continued past rows 20, 21, 22…searching for 25 and finding it to be the back row.  The very back row.  The row by the restrooms.  The row with seats that recline an inch or so only. 

I stowed my suitcase in the overhead compartment and slipped into the seat by the window.  The babe of a young mother stood in the aisle and smiled at me.  I smiled back.  “Would you mind changing seats?” she asked.  “”My son would be across the aisle and he’s only five.”

“No problem.  Of course,” I said, grabbing my carry-on and sliding back into the aisle and into my new seat. 

In the flurry of that quick exchange, I did not review the implications for Dave, that my move would leave him in the three-seat row with two little boys.  He is great with kids, the best man for the job, but the three-hour ride would not be serene for him.  Luckily, as I’ve said, the mom was a babe.

As it happened, my center seat across the aisle was next to the woman with coppery curls; Frani was her name. The last person to board the plane grinned at me as she nudged past into the window seat to my left: Caitlin, the girl with the black fingerless gloves.  She flashed a card on a string that hung from her neck and said, “Junior Crew Member.  I’m traveling alone.  Last one on; last one off.”

Turned out, for this flight at least, the last row was the place to be.  Caitlin was chatty and endearing, and I silently thanked God for another reminder, for I’ve had many, to avoid hasty judgments.  Together, Caitlin and I watched a trailer for “Despicable Me 2” and raved about the first version.  She told me she loved pirates and we were as one in our love for Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow.  We also discovered a mutual enthusiasm for Halloween, and when I said I am always a witch, she totally outdid me in listing a variety of costumes from years past – the Corpse Bride, a gypsy, a ghost, and of course, a pirate.  “I had chains and skulls and stuff, a bunch of old-looking keys hanging from my belt, a cool ring.  Everything.”

While Caitlin watched a cartoon on the screen on the seat back before her, I turned to Frani, she of the coppery curls.  She was a year younger than I am and in short order, we covered menopause, sleep issues, anxiety, our interests, work, and relationships.  Ah, strangers.  Invariably we have so much in common. 

While turning fifty steered me toward volunteering at Mercy Learning Center and writing, Frani left a career in advertising and now works in integrative health advocating the uses of essential oils.  “My mother uses them all the time,” Caitlin chirped up.  “If I get a headache or stomach ache, she rubs them on the bottom of my feet.”

Frani slid a zippered pouch from her carry-on and opened it to reveal small vials of oils.  “Lea says she’s anxious and has a hard time sleeping,” Frani said to Caitlin.  “Which samples do you think would be best for her?”  Perhaps she was just being kind to include the child in choosing, but Caitlin thought a moment and said, “’Serenity’, definitely, and maybe ‘Past Tense’?” 

Frani gave me a wide-eyed look that acknowledged the girl’s accuracy then nodded at Caitlin.  “You know your stuff.”

“Like I said, my mom uses them all the time.”

“An old soul,” Frani whispered.

Meanwhile, an elephant was making a lot of noise across the aisle.  Dave was entertaining the two boys, forcing air between his pressed lips, pretending to be a pachyderm.  Jesse, the five year old, joined in gleefully, adding a swinging arm movement to simulate the animal’s trunk.  The babe-of-a-mom looked at me and mouthed of my husband, as many have before her, “He’s amazing.”  Then, she noticed Frani’s satchel of samples.  “Ohhhh.  Essential oils!  I use them all the time.  Lavender?  Omigod.  Love it.”

Really?  Here I am in a row of oils enthusiasts and they’ve never crossed my radar. 

Thunderstorms, however, were on the radar, and the plane began to buck in turbulence.  As we shuddered and swayed, Caitlin asked calmly, “What’s all this about?” 

“Storms.  Wind,” I said.  “Not a problem.”

She looked out the window at soaring mounds of water vapor, towering turrets, lumbering beasts, great sails of clouds, and that’s when she saw it.  “Look!  A rainbow!” 

At first, I missed it because it was below us, an arched gateway of yellow, red, and green.  A wonder, it was.  “You know the song?”  I said.  “Somewhere Over the Rainbow?  We are there!  Over the rainbow!”  It was an omen, surely, of a joyous marriage ahead for Shannon and Dan, and also, “Florida’s welcoming me home,” Caitlin said. 

I have to marvel at the workings of the Universe.  Among those at La Guardia scanning Kindles, tapping iPads, and the odd fellow reading a book, I’d spotted coppery curls and a girl in fingerless gloves.  And then, they came to me, and together, we flew over a rainbow. 

When the plane touched down in Sarasota, those in the back row, the furthest row back, the row tight to the restrooms, slapped each other five and crowed, “Best row ever!”      

                

Plenty of Company

Long before cancer threatened me, I fretted, worried and plucked at life. What was my purpose? Was I on the right path? My to-do list stared me down like a stern parent, hands-on-hips. While I stewed and roiled, others, it appeared, went smoothly through their days. My friend Gail listened kindly to my rants and cautioned, “Don’t judge your interiors by others’ exteriors.”

And then, in May, I received my diagnosis. Now I did have something to worry about. Fear and uncertainty shadowed my soul while all around was soft light, windows open, leaves pale green. More than ever, I felt alone as everyone else joyfully welcomed spring.

One Friday, Dave and I drove south on I-95 having left the hospital where I’d had an IV anti-biotic to combat an infection. Dave’s phone buzzed with a text message from our friend Sharon. He was driving, so I checked the small screen.

“A group from school is meeting at Ash Creek and she wants to know if we’d like to join them.” Mentally I leaned toward a knee-jerk no.

“What do you think?” said Dave.

To my surprise, I responded, “Might be fun. Let’s do it.”

We swung off the ramp and drove to the saloon. Our friends were gathered, as usual, at a long table toward the back of the restaurant beneath a punched tin ceiling, swooping long horns and a pair of mounted chaps.

As Dave and I pulled up our stools, we were greeted with broad smiles. Hallie was well into her cosmo, Sharon was sipping a margarita, Deb had a lemon drop martini and the boys – Matt, Steve and John – were polishing off a pitcher of PBR’s – Pabst Blue Ribbon beers.

The room was crowded with bald paunchy guys in tee-shirts and jeans, muscled young men in tee-shirts and jeans, and shapely women in tee-shirts and jeans. The air buzzed with good-natured chatter, anchored by laughter from our table at the end of the bar.

I gazed at my friends – happy, laughing, seemingly carefree - and thought that if I were anyone else in the restaurant, ours was the table I’d envy. But I know the stories behind each bright-eyed smile: Hallie and Deb have both lost sisters, Sharon’s best friend passed away last summer, Matt’s girlfriend is scheduled for heart surgery, and Steve has prostate cancer.

Of course, I had no way of knowing what worry the guy in the Grateful Dead tee-shirt tucked to the back of his mind while meeting his girl for a beer at Ash Creek. And the sassy woman with the full red lips chatting with the bartender? What might her silent sorrow be? Exteriors. Hm. They tell so little.

With my hands cupped around my margarita, I took in the scene: Hallie’s head thrown back in laughter, Sharon grinning, Steve and Dave touching mugs in a toast, Deb calling the club on her cell to sign up for spinning class. A warmth of understanding suffused me as I realized that we’re all in this together. We are each other’s comfort and company during the hard times that are, as much as love, part of life.