This evening I got a call from a friend. Her son was admitted to the hospital, and she was waiting for word on his condition. As I waited with her over the phone, our conversation took many turns from serious to light to reminiscent. I have known her since she approached me in the library in college 30 years ago, and she told me something about herself that in all this time I never knew. We found reasons to laugh about it, which is something we both needed, and somehow we ended on whether people roll joints anymore and how all these edibles and Jules have removed one of the best parts of getting high. I don’t miss the high, but I do miss the shared experience. The glow of the lighter through the smoke. The scent. The friends. The calm. The music.

Her son is going to be okay.

Today I had exactly two conversations, and during both of them I learned amazing things about amazing people.

As I watched tv tonight, I thought about all the time I have wasted staring at that box on the wall, but then I remembered the juicy parts of the day and I felt okay.

I read once that offering your time is the greatest honor you can bestow.

Some of the best moments I have shared were spent in silence. Watching rain wash over a lake with someone I never got along with is one of them. Sitting in lawn chairs in a pasture in the middle of the night watching the stars with my brother is another. Listening to Joe Cocker on vinyl while eating habanero salsa and chips at the kitchen table with my father-in-law is a random memory but a cherished one. Likely best of all was lying in the grass holding kite strings with my three-year-old. She and I turned to look at each other while we held our kite as it soared way up high. I could relive that moment of silence for the rest of my life.

There are many others. I collect them.

For a while now, I have felt sad that my adventures are running out of time to find me and that life has fewer surprises ahead. But I have many more bottles to fill with precious, silent moments, and I have a good 40 or 50 years of shelf space left to store them.

I had a conversation this morning with an incredible woman who I didn’t know was so incredible despite having known her a year and a half. That’s what happens when you don’t talk to people–you never learn how truly amazing they are. I am blown away, and I am inspired by the number of extraordinary life stories this 70-year-old woman has to tell. I pleaded with her to write them down, to write a book, and I passed off that request as an encouragement to record her life story for posterity when in fact my intentions were entirely selfish. I want to read this book. I want to have lived a life as exciting as hers. And maybe I have. Margaret Atwood would be disappointed in me if I didn’t tell my story. But she doesn’t know me, and she would never read me. She simply planted a seed that she intended for anyone who would listen. I did.

To satisfy Margaret’s request and another of an old friend, here is a bit of my story.

. . . . . .

I was maybe five years old at the time, too young to be distracted by worries and too old to not notice the important things. I stood atop a hillside of tall yellow grass spotted with gray, jagged rocks and mammoth boulders. The rolling yellow hills extended in all directions until they met blue sky. Baboons perched on the boulders nearby, looking out over their home with the same wonder. I felt an intense sense of freedom. Standing in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of everywhere, looking out over the vast African landscape made an intense, profound, and everlasting impact. Freedom was a discovery I made through a combination of experiences there, witnessing a dichotomy of human bondage and the vast expanse of the savanna. But magic, the magic of the imagination, is the second most important thing I learned and carry with me still.

My mom kept my bookshelf well stocked from before I could read until our house burned down when I was in junior high. Middle-child syndrome is real, but very young, invisible me was given the gift of books to bide my time alone. One particularly lonely afternoon, I discovered a paperback on my bookshelf that had a picture of a dark, wild jungle, with images of boas hanging from twisted tree limbs and assorted glowing eyes peering out of the blackness. The illustrator had stolen the image right from my memory. My family lived in South Africa and travelled through the southern countries. Our travels led us through a mysterious jungle, the looks of which were amazingly torn right from the cover of that book, Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, of whom I became an instant fan. I wrote a research paper in high school over Kipling and discovered his imagination was like mine. The line between imagination and reality didn’t exist for him as a young boy in the jungles of India. As an adult, he recounted his magical experiences as though he were a child, as though they were real, as I have always done with my African experiences. But in a dark jungle, who’s to say what is or isn’t real?

. . . . . .

Eleanor lived a magical life in her mind and some might say an exciting one in reality. Perhaps she will peek outside from behind the heavy curtains in her living room and let some light in. Maybe even set aside the ruse a bit and put a little of herself into the world. Just kidding. Her ruse is often sabotaged by her inability to keep her own light in. She cannot help being her authentic self, as much as she tries to fool the world. Silly girl.

I had a dream once that I fell asleep on the edge of a plateau that looked out over a canyon. The ground I lay on and all around me was deep red orange, and the sun shone through a deep blue sky. I was warm as I basked in the bright sun overhead, and asleep next to me was another person who in the dream I knew but in reality didn’t. I felt intensely at peace. At times I experience this same surreal feeling while awake. I am certain that most of the world isn’t familiar with that lucid dream state outside of sleep. I count myself lucky. I could possibly blame it on my illness, but I have had these experiences my entire life, long before the illness showed up. I have always felt apart from other people. Awkward, even. Others can’t possibly exist in this world I live in, could they? I dare not ask them.