June 24, 2016--Always Talks to Strangers: The Quiet Room

This is from August 3, 2007 and is a friend's favorite. She asked me to post it again--

It wasn’t a good sign that I didn’t know where to find the belt for my bathrobe.

I had never been to a spa before and when the very nice attendant helped me slip it on, after seeing me struggling to find the belt and sensing that I had come to the conclusion that it was not for some reason included, in a hushed voice, since we were in the Quiet Room, she told me it was hanging right there on the back where it had been stitched in place. Embarrassed for the first of a number of times to come, she as gently as she spoke, reached behind me and drew the two ends to the front, asking, “Do you need any help tying it?”

Only slightly embarrassed this time, trying not to sound inappropriately uncalm considering where this was transpiring, I said, “I think I can manage, thank you. I do have one at home, but it has a belt that comes strung through loops.”

At last with me securely belted up, she asked, “Can I give you a tour?”

“That would be nice,” I said.

“Well, let’s start right here in the Quiet Room. As you can see the lights are very dim. That’s intentional. It helps guests feel calm. And we also have these relaxation beds.” She pointed to about twenty of these arranged in a dimly-lit circle that she said is an “ideal arrangement to induce relaxation,” adding, “It’s a very spiritual arrangement.”

My eyes by then had adjusted to the light and I could see the teak-wood, slatted chaise-like relaxation beds covered head-to-foot with various layers of linen sheets and terrycloth towels. I also noticed that they were not adjustable and that the end where one was to presumably place one’s head was quite a bit lower than where one’s legs would wind up going.

“If I lie on one of them,” I asked, “won’t I get dizzy, and,”  knowing my propensities, “maybe even pass out? I don’t want you to have to call 911.” I chuckled less from my sorry attempt at humor than out of nervousness.

“That wouldn’t be a problem at all. We’re very close to the local hospital. You might have seen it when you drove here from Auburn.”

“I didn’t see it but it’s good to know it’s right here. I feel certain that will help me relax.”

Ignoring that ironic barb, or missing it entirely, she pressed on, “I don’t know if you noticed the music we have here in the Quiet Room. It was very carefully selected by our spa manager. He came to us from California and put these tapes together especially for us. They’re very meditative don’t you think?”

“Oh yes, I can hear it now.” What sounding like wind chimes accompanied by a lute was faintly audible as if descending from the vaulted ceiling which I saw was covered with fluffy frescoed clouds. “The music does sound very meditative.”

“I’m so glad you feel that way because at 4:30 this afternoon, the spa manager himself, Evan is his name, he will be conducting a meditation and relaxation session right here in the Quiet Room. If you’d like, I can reserve a relaxation bed for you. We still have a few free, including one right over there by the waterfall. I know it’s hard to see because of the way Evan has the lights turned down but maybe you can hear it. He adjusts the flow of the water just so, so at the same time you can still hear the music and also the relaxing sound of the water. Should I save a place for you? There’s no extra charge of course and Evan wants guests to know he doesn’t accept gratuities.” I nodded, thinking I should sign up for something. All the other scheduled activities sounded too strenuous for total relaxation—Pilates, aerobics, fasting, purging, colonics. Especially the latter.

“And,” she continued, looking very pleased that I was getting drawn into participating in at least one thing that they had obviously taken so much care and thought to organize, “Did you notice that these specially-designed bathrobes do not have any pockets? Though all the brochures say this is so guests will not bring cell phones to the Quiet Room, it’s really because Evan doesn’t want anyone to have any money with them. He feels strongly that we should ‘leave the world behind,’ that’s what he always says, when we enter here.”

She smiled ecstatically—I knew that because I could see, through the gloom of the scented air, the light emitted by the whiteness of her glowing teeth.

“Also there’s one more thing I must show you. I feel that from the way you responded to the music that this will be one of your favorite activities while you’re here with us.” Again gently, she turned me away from the semicircle of beds and pointed toward what appeared to be a cedar-wood door. “Right there,” she said, “behind that door is our Eucalyptus Shower.” While my eyes strained to adjust again to the even-dimmer light in that corner of the Quiet Room, Shelly, she had introduced herself, remained stationary, still smiling broadly and pointing at the shower door.

“I have to confess, though you’ve probably figured it out by now, that I’m not that experienced with spas and I’ve never heard of that kind of shower. How does it work—do they put eucalyptus in the water?”

“You’re being silly again,” she punched me softly and conspiratorially on the shoulder of my robe, “It’s really a steam shower.”

“Steam? That sounds pretty hot to me. I have very delicate skin. Though,” I winked at her, “you already told me the hospital is nearby.”

"It is down the road; but you don’t stand under the steam like you do in a water shower. You would get burned if you did that.” Exactly, I thought but didn’t say anything. “It’s more like a steam bath. We make steam and put eucalyptus oil in it. Everyone in California takes them. Evan feels it’s good for your spirit as well as your body. It’s aromatherapy. You know about that I’m sure.” I chose not to contradict her, hoping the eucalyptus steam bath wasn’t going to be too big a part of the session I had signed up for. Having grown up in Brooklyn I was still more of a regular water shower kind of person than a steam-and-aroma-therapy one.

                                                                   * * *

It was nearly 4:00 and since I had a half hour to kill I decided to walk around the grounds. They are very beautiful, and from the inn’s brochure I understood are modeled after Monet’s garden in Giverny. I wandered around a bit, over the arched wooden bridge that spanned the water lily pond just like the one so familiar in Monet’s late paintings; and before I knew it, it was time to return to the Quiet Room.

In fact, it was nearly four-forty. I was ten minutes late but thought that would be all right, since for an experience of the kind I was about to have, leaving the world behind, as Evan always said, I felt certain no one would be watching the clock. Probably, there weren't even any clocks.

But I was wrong—pacing back and forth by the door, tapping on his watch was, I was sure, Evan. Blonde streaks such as his could only come from California. In a harsh whisper he admonished me, “Everyone else is here waiting for you so they can relax. Please get onto your relaxation bed so we can begin.”

Cinching my robe even tighter around me in an attempt to make myself invisible, I slunked over to, wouldn’t you know it, bed number 13. As quickly as I could, half tangled up in my ankle-length robe, I lowered myself onto the bed, not at all gracefully since, as you know, the head end was so much lower that that for my legs. But I did manage to get settled without choking myself with the belt.

Almost immediately I realized that too much blood was rushing in the wrong direction and as no surprise to myself I was already getting quite dizzy.

To cover my anxiety, sotto voce, I said, as the etherial music continued to envelope us, “Lying here like this reminds me of a being in a mausoleum.” And, as I looked around at the other nineteen lying there wrapped like mummies in their oversized robes, if they had been orange and not white, we would have looked at lot more like the 38 members of the Heavens Gate Hale-Bopp cult who committed mass suicide together back in 1997 than guests paying $500 a night so we could relax.

I vowed that if I survived the session and managed to avoid being raced to the hospital, at dinner later than night in the inn’s award-wining restaurant I would be sure to have their legendary Mood Altering Warm Chocolate Cake with Bourbon Ice Cream and Toasted Walnuts. As they note on the menu—“Because You Deserve It.”

June 17, 2016--Always Talk To Strangers: Sue Ellen

From July 18, 2007--

In the Safeway parking lot in Estes Park, Colorado, on route to Wyoming we met, let me call her, Sue Ellen

Into the bed of her battered pickup she was loading dozens of 24-packs of Pepsi, regular and diet; Seven-Up; Sprite; Dr, Pepper; and H&W Root Beer.  It was hot, maybe over a hundred in the starkly shadeless lot. 

“Sheet,” I thought I heard her say.

Ordinarily I would have ignored her, especially in this heat and considering I was lugging a sack of my own groceries.  But, perhaps because we were beginning our vacation, had nothing urgent to tend to, or maybe as the result of being a little oxygen-deprived because of the altitude, I stopped and offered to help her unload her enormous shopping cart, large enough, it appeared, to hold a full-size refrigerator.  She was soaked through from the effort but didn’t acknowledge my offer and again, this time I was sure I heard her, muttered to no one I particular, “Sheet.”

I should have taken the hint and moved on; but, trying to be helpful, and perhaps to lift her spirits, I said, “Looks like you have quite a party planned for the weekend.” 

At that she wheeled on me and, with hands on her considerable hips, dripping sweat on the asphalt, spat, “I should be so lucky.”  Maybe really meaning to say, “Why don’t you go back to where you came from.  The last thing I need is to be talked down to by a big-city faggot like you.”

With a snort she turned away from me and resumed unloading her cart.  She had nothing but sodas in it—no chips, no beer, no cold cuts.  She seemed to have told me the truth when she said what she said about not having a party planned.  Again I should have gone on my way, but for some reason didn’t.  Maybe, as I always do when traveling in rural areas, I was clinging to romantic notions about how friendly and welcoming folks generally are who live in small towns, and I didn’t want my first encounter to be so off-putting.   It threatened to impart a sour note to a time we hoped would be sweet and relaxing—we had been so stressed the last few weeks back in NewYork.  So in as light and friendly a tone as I could muster, considering how she had dismissed me, I said to her aggressively turned back, “You must have a large family.”  

As I spoke these words I was mortified to realize I was likely being inappropriate—too intrusive and intimate—and perhaps insulting, considering how large she was and thus what I might be unintentionally intimating about the size of, not the number in her family.

Without deigning to face me, still half-buried in the shopping cart, she said, giving equal, measured emphasis to each syllable, “I do not know what your problem is mister.  I’m workin’.  Is that OK with you?  Or don’t you have anythin’ better to do?  Like maybe having a glass of Chablis wine or somethin’?”

Though that should have been more than enough to suggest to me that it was time to join Rona in our rented car—it was clear from the look on Rona’ face that she was feeling, even though she was too far away to hear, that I was making a total ass of myself—I stood there watching the soda lady slam case after case into her truck, uttering now a stream of “Sheets.”

“So what’s your problem?  I’m beginnin’ to think that you’re quite a creep.  Or worse. A perv.”

“No, really, I only stopped to help, thinkin’ you could use some considerin’ the load you got there.”  I caught myself unwittingly slipping into my version of Western-speak and also was alarmed by my careless use of the possible “load’ double entendre.  But, undeterred, I pressed on, “You told me in no uncertain terms that these are not for a party and that you’re workin’,” I couldn’t stop myself—blame it on the altitude.  “Mind my askin’ what kind of work you do with all them sodas?”

“I run two vendin’ machines,” she muttered under her breath.

“Sorry?  I didn’t follow you.”  What business of mine was any of this?  I thought in another minute Rona would be askin’ where’s the nearest divorce court.  And I could surely understand why.  But I was fully into finding out what all this soda was about.  “‘Vendin’’ machines’?  You said you ‘run’ ‘em?”

Why she continued to deal with me, I’ll never know, but she did, “Yeah, like I said—I got two: one out by the gondola, you know that goes up that mountain over there,” to show me where she swept a massive arm in the direction of town. “The other one’s down outside the ‘mergency room.  At the hospital.”  She tossed her head to the right in the direction of, I assumed, the hospital.

“That’s what you do?  Your work, I mean?  You said you was working.”

“So what’s so wrong with that?”  Before I could say “Nothing,” she raced ahead, “I know what you’re thinkin’—‘Big freakin’ deal—this bitch’s got two little soda machines and she calls that “work.”

“No, no really, that’s not what I’m thinkin’; but I am thinkin’ . . . .”  Thankfully I cut myself off before I could add, “What I am thinking is how you can make a living from this.”

“Right, you’re wonderin’ how I can make a livin’ from this.”  She noticed my impossible-to-contain smile.  Rona leaned on the car horn and I tossed a grin in her direction to indicate that things were going better, and as a plea to her to give me a few more minutes.

“Well . . .”

“Fair question.  Though it’s frankly no business of yours.”  She paused as if considering whether or not to finally end this.  I would not have blamed her—I was way off base.  But still I stood there just looking toward her.  “I ask myself that every freakin’ day,” she had decided to continue with me, “And can’t come up with a good answer.  But I’m not cut out for desk work and I’d kill myself before I’d work in one of them motels or restaurants agin—‘Can I get  you some more coffee?’ If I ever have to say that again in my life, all the time smilin’, I’d cut my wrists or put a bullet through that guy’s head.  Of course I’m kiddin’, you know,” I thought I saw the first inkling of a crooked smile.  “Though I wouldn’t want you to thinkin’ I’m violent or anythin’.  Though if you asked Gil I’m sure he’d have a different story.”

“Gil?” I asked.

“Yeah him.  Carly’s father.”

“Carly?”

“My daughter.  Just turned fourteen.  That’s her in the cab.”  I looked in that direction and saw a mass of streaked hair just above the back of the passenger seat.

“She looks nice,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Shot him in the balls.”

“Sorry--Who?  Where?”

“The balls.  His dick.  Probably what you’d call the penis or somethin’”  She snickered at that.  Seeing me cringe, she said, “I’m Sue Ellen by the way.  You already met Carly.”  I introduced myself and extended my hand which Sue Ellen didn’t take.

“It’s not my business, But why did you . . . ?”

“‘Cause a her.”  She indicated she was referring to her daughter.

“Gil . . . ?”

“That’s right.  I told him six months prior I’d cut his balls off if he touched her again.  Which I didn’t, but I shot him there front and center after I found him in her room at 2:00 am.”  She looked over toward Carly.  “Never needed to do any time for it.  Everyone knew he got what he deserved, includin’ the police and the sheriff.  They all call him Capon now.  Lots a laughs all round.  That prick bastard.  I shoulda shot ‘em dead!”

“I’m sure Carly’s happy you didn’t.  I mean they might have put you in jail and maybe even taken her away from you.  You know, put her in a foster home.  That would have been, who knows, even . . . .”

“Worse?”  Sue Ellen completed my thought.  “I’m not so sure ‘bout that.  Look at me--I’m such a good mother?  Maybe Carly’d be better off with someone else.  And I’d be where I’d at least have a roof over my head and get three squares a day.  Don’t sound so bad to me.”  She was now looking me straight in the eye.  I found it difficult to return her look—this was way, way more than I had been seeking when I stopped to offer to help with the sodas.  I had just wanted to be friendly, chit-chat a little, and maybe soak up some local color.  Here I found myself, less than two hours after landing in Denver, in the middle of a family soap opera.  Feeling like a total creep with nothing helpful to say or offer.

Still I tried, “I’m certain things will get better for you.  Carly’ll graduate from high school, maybe then go on to college, and make a good life for herself.  Isn’t that what we want for all of our children?” I wasn’t about to tell her then that I didn’t have any children of my own.  “My father used to call it ‘improvement in the breed.’  Sounds a little insensitive—children are of course not horses. But my dad’s was a good point nonetheless, don’t you think?”

“To tell you the honest, with all due respect—‘cause I assume he otherwise was a fine man--but he sounds like an asshole.  There’s not much improvin’ in the breed ‘round here, not even with the horses.  And when it came to me and that shit Gil, what popped out in our Carly ain’t such great shakes.  I’m sure it’s all Gil’s fault, but she’s been on lithium for six years already, got kicked out a school more times than I can count, and I’m sure’ll be droppin’ out for good soon as they let her.  Of course knocked up just like me.  So there’s your improvin’ in the breed for you.”  Snorting again, she dismissed me with the back of her hand and returned to loading up her truck.

Rona gave the horn two brief taps.  She had given me the time I had sought and, sensing things had taken a bad turn, in spite of my earlier indication of reassurance, was looking over at me lovingly and sympathetically.

Not knowing how to think about her situation or what else to say, feeling guilty and wanting to get away, I said clumsily, “All the best to you, Sue Ellen.  And to you Carly—good luck.  Nice to meet you.”  Her window had been rolled up all this time and I’m sure she had not heard one word that had passed between her mother and me.

Without looking back, I loped over to our car, tossed the groceries into the back seat, climbed in, gave Rona a peck of a kiss, shifted into reverse, and headed to our motel.  

"What was that about?" Rona asked half drugged due to jet-lag and the heat.

"Darned if I know."

June 10, 2016--Always Talk To Strangers: One Brief Moment

From July 19, 2006--

The sun was setting over the Tetons.  A small crowd of visitors with drinks in hand gathered outside the Jackson Lake Lodge to watch the sun roll behind those magnificent mountains before dropping off the edge of the earth and plunging us all into instant darkness and chilling breezes.

“I take a lot of pictures but never develop any.”  Rona and I were snapped out of our contemplative end-of-day reverie by a mountain of a man with a camera hanging from his neck that was so huge with its protruding lens that only his awesome bulk could support it.  He appeared to be from the middle of the country, likely a farmer, and from his tractor we imagined he had seen enough sunsets in his life to satisfy him.  What was so special about another even in a spectacular place such as this? 

Being from New York City though, where at best there are only glimpses of the sky, we of course could never get enough of these sunsets and are thus additionally expert at extracting their full meaning from every degree of the sun’s decline.  

Thus, we ignored him.

But he persisted, “I’ve been coming here ever year since 1987.  Sometimes twice a year.  Me and the Mrs. drive our RV here all the way from Georgia, where we’re from.”   

Resisting being brought back to the mundane, I tried half-turning my back to him.  Rona peered into her glass of sweet Vermouth, playing with the ice. 

“You see my son over there?" he persisted, "He was three the first time we came here.  He also had a camera.  He'd spend three whole days taking pictures and carefully advancing the film.  They still used film back then.  When we were about to leave he took the film out of the camera and threw it in the trash.  In one of them cans right there.  My wife, Rosie, she was fit to be tied and while she rummaged around in the trash looking for the film I asked Billy, he's the tall one there by the bench, why he did that.  Exasperated, he said to me, ‘Dad, I’m done taking those pictures.’ He was annoyed why I was asking about it.  He told us just taking the pictures was what was important to him.  Not the pictures themselves.  You see he knew to me at that time it was the pictures themselves that were important."

That got our attention.  We’re always interested in anything that promised something new and what he was saying about what was important to each of them seemed to promise that.  I felt I had mischaracterized him. Made invalid assumptions based on how he looked. So I asked, “Then what keeps bringing the three of you back here every year?" I smiled, "It’s a long drive.”

“Well, you see I’m a forester, a freelance one, and I come here to check on this place.  To see how things are changing.  And they are.  No doubt 'bout that.  And I don’t mean the result of them fires up in Yellowstone.  That’s a part of nature.  And good at that.  It’s the other thing that worries me.”

“The ‘other thing?’”

“You know what the scientists have been saying.  I’ll show you what I mean.  Look over there at Mount Moran.  You see that glacier over there?”  We looked across Jackson Lake and nodded.  “Well, when I started trekking out here that glacier was twice the size it is now.  Don’t take me for a tree-hugger.  That I’m not.  But it seems to me that we have this one brief moment."

"I'm not sure I'm following thou," I said.

"For me it’s almost over, my heart’s not been right, but for Billy over there, who’s only twenty-two, I’m worried.  You know, in the past it was religious fanatics and cult leaders who predicted the end of the world was coming.  They even came up with dates for that.  Of course it never happened.  Not yet anyway. But what’s different now is that we have every scientist agreeing that things are not heading in a good direction for us.  So that’s why I keep my eye on that glacier.”

Though understanding, this was not a lesson we had come all this way to hear--we wanted to just take things in--so I changed the subject, “You mentioned that you do forestry work freelance.  I always assumed that guys in your field all worked for the government.”

“Well, that’s true.  Everyone else I went to school with does work for the Forestry Service or some other government agency.  I, though, saw a niche for myself so I’ve been doin' it on my own.”

“How’s that?  How does that work?”

He suddenly turned silent; but since he started this I pressed him New-York style, “You worked for developers or something?”

After a moment he shrugged and said, “Sort of like that.”  I held up to give him a minute.  It was clear that he really didn’t want to talk about this.  But he added, “You’ve driven around this area, right?”

“Yes, just yesterday and today through eastern Washington and then across the panhandle of Idaho to get here.”

“And what did you see?”

“Most of it was amazingly beautiful,” Rona said, “We followed the Clearwater River for more than 200 miles.”

“And?”

We didn’t get where he was going with this so we just looked back at him.  He hitched his pants up over that remarkable belly, “Did you see all those developments closing in?”  We nodded again.

He didn’t answer his own question.  He just stood there staring off at Mount Moran. 

Then he looked around to catch Rosie’s eye, she had been circling us,  “There she is.  I better get going before I catch hell.  Nice talkin’ to you. But one more thing.”


"Yeah?" 


"Like you, Billy just wants to take it one moment at a time. Can't really blame him, considering." He gestured across the lake, "So that's what's going on with him and the camera. He knows what's happening out there and prefers not to make a record of it. What else can I tell you?" He took a deep breath, and from deep within himself said, "There is one last thing before I go."


"What's that?"


"I'm just carrying around this here camera. Haven't taken a picture with it the past three years."   

He laughed and with that was gone.

June 3, 2016--Always Talk To Strangers: Holly & Chris

Beginning in July, 2007, I wrote a series of pieces about encounters with strangers. By now they total nearly 50. Many appeared here. 

Over the next number of months, on Fridays, I will publish some of my favorites in the hope that you will enjoy them.

Here from that July is the first of them--"Holly & Chris"--

I was brought up in a family that did not believe in friends. Or even in the concept of friendship.

Thus, by the time I graduated from college, I had established no lasting friendships. And since from everyone I knew who had these kinds of relationships—those formed during childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood—this meant that I would never have real friends because real friends, if not carried over from early in life, could not be made during middle age much less even later.

This was one of the axioms of that era, equivalent to the theory, actually assertion, that one’s personality, one’s very being was fully formed by no later than age eighteen. The rest of life was a matter of playing out that hand of intra-psychic cards.

So, like my parents, I focused almost all of my relating on my relatives, or what my Aunt Fay, a strong proponent of blood being thicker than water (as if water flowed in the veins of everyone with DNA different than ours), called “My wonderful family!” I can hear that exclamation point even now, lo these many decades after I first felt it.

At the time I didn’t question any of these assumptions, these forbidding a priori givens. I merely motored on, preparing myself in a variety of ways for responsible adulthood. Always keeping in mind my father’s admonition when I took the risk to ask, rather tell him, if it was permissible to want a life with connections beyond just my loving immediate and extended family, was it acceptable to want to seek happiness in various ways likely to be different from his and their definitions? When I found the passive, conditional-voice courage to ask this, he admonished me with something that has echoed through all of my life and against which I have attempted in recent years to struggle—“What does happiness have to do with anything?” Period. End of story. So get on with it. Which I attempted to do.

But later, feeling somewhat bereft and isolated from the kinds of warm relationships I saw among the people I knew, friendships that clearly meant so much to them, that obviously enriched their lives, and in many cases were stronger and more profound than what they took or got from their own families, I struggled, first, to try to understand why I was taught not to trust strangers and to seek all warmth, love, and security from just within my family; and, second, I tentatively began to reach out to others to see if there was any possibility of forming later-in-life versions of friendships—pushing against the more pessimistic developmental perspective and admonishments of my family and formative years.

In regard to the first struggle--My mother’s immediate family managed to get out of Eastern Europe a decade before the Nazi anschluss and the subsequent pogroms and ultimately the Holocaust. Those of her relatives who remained behind, thinking it would all pass them by, never made it beyond Auschwitz and Dachau. And so, when they arrived in America and later learned the full horror of what they had escaped, they huddled together even more, isolated in their foreignness, their Jewishness, and their perceived vulnerability. Even here. In America!

My father’s people were more secular, solidly middle-class bourgeois Austrian Jews who came to the United States in the 1880s, never agreed to be ghettoized on the Lower East Side, learned English quickly, made a good living, bought a house in a mixed neighborhood in Brooklyn, and considered themselves both superior to the Polish and Russian Ashkenazi Jews. Above all they felt assimilated and decidedly American. It seems that the first thing they did after buying the brick house on Bedford Avenue was figure out how to get to Ebbets Field so they could root for the Dodgers in person—it didn’t get any more American than that.

But then, just as they were settling in to be quite comfortable, they were battered by the Depression and discovered than not only were their savings worthless and their house dramatically diminished in value, but also in the eyes of others in even more desperate circumstances they were JEWS and were thus collectively responsible for what the country, their country, was suffering. They were seen to be a part of the universal “Zionist conspiracy” that had inflicted this nightmare on America and the rest of the world. And so when my father and his brothers and sisters went out looking desperately for work, willing to do anything, even things decidedly beneath them, they were met with signs that literally said--

“No Jews. No dogs.”

So indeed, what did happiness have to do with anything? And who could you trust? Basically no one. In truth, though from both of my families’ experiences it is no wonder they would turn inward, they also found that you could not, even when just fighting to pay the rent and feed your wife and children, you could not casually even trust everyone in your, to quote Fay, “wonderful family.” I could tell you some of these stories if that were the subject of the day. Suffice to say that I suspect my father and my Uncle Harry, who reside now in side-by-side graves in Mt. Lebanon Cemetery, are still not talking to each other.

So is it any wonder that these two families, with my blood an equal mix of both, would orient me not to trust strangers and thereby not to believe in friendship. In a world red in tooth and claw, where dangers and worse lurk, though they are not perfect—Mt. Lebanon being a case in point--when it comes to friends versus family, no contest.

But, second struggle, when I looked around for counter examples in my own family I noticed that my cousins Nina and Murray, to cite two, had not allowed the family promulgations to define their lives—in both cases they carried dear childhood friends along with them well into and beyond their middle years. They were still family stalwarts but they had reserved equal emotional energy for lifelong friendships. So with their example before me, with considerable trepidation, I pushed myself to begin to reach out to others, seeking at least the possibility of relationships. I thought, if I can succeed at that, which would be a big step, who knows where it might lead. I might actually make a few friends!

Which brings me to Holly & Chris.

For some years now Rona and I have been “regulars” at Jenny Lake Lodge in the Tetons of Wyoming. This means that we return there each year on exactly the same dates as in all the previous years. And we are by no means the only guests who do so—we understand that fully fifty percent do and so that means we see many familiar faces each year when we return. And in this new mode of seeking relationships, since dinner is provided and the place is small, it is easy and natural, even for me, minimally to nod hello and ask how other regulars fared during the fall and winter. Of course we hear many stories about illnesses and operations and children graduating from college and plans for the future when we all will be working less or, better, not at all.

Chris & Holly have been regulars for about ten years. Their time at Jenny overlaps all our days but for one—they leave the day before we do. More about that in a moment.

Last July, after just nodding at each other in the lodge for at least two years, Chris asked if we might like to meet one evening for a drink before dinner. Sensing that my interest in wanting to do so was tempered by some ambivalence he must have sensed seeping up from all of my deep early-life conditioning (which in itself was impressive since he didn’t even appear to be Jewish), he suggested that we meet for only a half hour before our dinner reservation time. Just enough time to do a bit more than nod and ask how long we each had been coming to Jenny, which cabins we had, and if we hiked or rode or did both. About as much discussion I had had with anyone at Jenny in eight years of regular ensconcement.

We might actually have time to begin to get to know each other, exploring the usual--Where are you from? Where were you from? Are you still working? At what? Or when did you retire and what did you do now with all the time you have? Do you travel to places other than the Tetons? Are there any places you like as much? What are you reading? Anything good? And what makes you laugh and feel happy? These later questions are of course not posed, but we discover each other’s sense of humor, or lack thereof, experientially.

So we met at 7:30 the next evening for a drink; and there was so much immediate frolicking and laughing, almost too much to engage in in public at the rather staid Jenny, that Michael the manager came over to us, not to admonish us but to ask if rather than two tables for two for dinner, perhaps, if he could arrange it, might we prefer a table for four?

To cover my nervousness about this prospect, I told Holly & Chris about a former colleague who after a rough divorce eventually began to date. He found the experience so depressing, he experienced so many unhappy evenings where after fifteen minutes both he and his date realized that it was not working that he developed the concept of the progressive date. They would agree to meet for a drink. If that went well they would move on to a light dinner. If that was pleasant, they would go to a movie. But if at any stage either one was not feeling positive about their prospects, they would have social permission to say, “It was very nice to meet you”; and that would end the evening.

Part in jest and part to protect myself from the tremors of an potential impending acquaintanceship, I suggested that we proceed with a progressive dinner—If Mike could hold the second table, let’s maybe begin by having appetizers together, I suggested; see how we do; and if it goes well, proceed to the soup course; and then to the salad; perhaps possibly all the way to the entrée; and who knows, maybe even to dessert!

And so we proceeded, and things began to work, to “click” between and among the four of us. We progressed from course to course and by the time the salad was served signaled to Mike that he could release the second table. We had such a good time that evening and over the next few days that when it came time for Holly & Chris to depart—a day before our time was up—I felt an overwhelming and unfamiliar feeling of sadness: I realized that unless we figured out how to meet between then and the following July it would be a full year before we could in person resume our acquaintanceship and progress perhaps beyond that to . . . ?

Now here we are again this year, back in Wyoming, back at Jenny; and all I can think about after resuming my love affair with the mountains and meadows and lakes and air is—Where are Holly & Chris? Are they OK? Chris had had some “medical issues” during the fall and winter and so . . .  But right there in the lodge the first evening we saw them, and they looked healthy and radiant and we happily picked up right where we left off.

Mike had already reserved a table for four, a little apart from the others correctly suspecting that we would again be laughing as much as catching up with each other’s lives and he didn’t want the other guests to be disturbed.

Our "dates" this year turned out so well that, after one of them, Holly, who is by nature not that kind of gal said, “If this were a real progressive date, we’d now go off to bed together.”

So, Dad, I hope things are fine with you and that maybe even you and Uncle Harry are talking. If not, give it a try because, take it from me, happiness and friendship are indeed worth pursuing.

Jenny Lake Lodge: Dinner for Two