Pattie says, I know what you mean, and we fall silent. We’re facing west, sitting on her deck beneath the awnings. I have taken the first steps of my afternoon walk. As I rounded the corner, Pattie’s voice drew me to a chair.
Pattie lives on the first turn of my quarter-mile circuit. We spent a pleasant fifteen minutes ruminating about life as each of us has experienced it. She’s seen five or six more years than I have but we’ve navigated similar currents. Marriage, divorce, childbirth, loss, disruption, difficult choices. Each of us remembers periods of our lives when we could barely stand to let someone see a dirty coffee cup, and other long stretches where we gave ourselves permission to grieve.
Pattie’s one of the ten-percenters, the fraction of people whom I have met that I know would never purposefully disappoint me. She’d finagle, and ferret, and fret, and get whatever she’d promised done. I like that about her.
The ninety-percent of the world which either can’t be bothered or wouldn’t keep their word might be ten-percenters to somebody else but not me. I don’t occupy the intersection of their Venn diagram. They have no liability to me, or they had it and abdicated. I accept that. At times it enrages me, when the ninety-percenter who fails me had invited me to trust them. But then I go for a walk, now on my quarter-mile and in the old days, around a 2-square-block circuit in Brookside. By the time I make it back home, I’ve let go of the anger. \
Some people can’t help themselves. They’re always angling for a better deal, and I just don’t make the cut. Like the college co-ed who says they’ll spend time with you unless they get a date, never realizing that you relied on the plans which you made with them. If I tell you that I’ll have dinner with you, it doesn’t matter if someone dangles a more tempting tryst in front of me. Let your belt out a notch; we’re chowing down.
It’s hard to be upset in the dappled light which plays across the park. As I walked, I remembered the evening when I stood outside my brother Frank’s house talking about moving to California.
“For God’s sake, tell me you’re not going to live in a trailer park,” he groaned. I shook my head and laughed. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” I admitted. “At least for a while.”
He gazed out on his street as darkness settled around us. “Okay then,” he finally sighed. “As long as you’re happy.” He’s one of the ten-percent. He loves me no matter what.
I finished my walk just as the shade overtook my little deck with its chilly air. Inside Angel’s Haven, the European washer unit had finished its dry cycle and pleasantly hummed in the anti-wrinkle phase. I stood gazing at the glow of the sun over the river road for a few minutes, then went inside to pour a cup of coffee.
It’s the second day of the fifty-third month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
“You’ve Got a Friend”, Carole King and James Taylor