Things That Matter

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

I don’t know when he said this, but, given what this man did and what he stood for, I’m sure he must have said it during some speech or talk about equal rights or peace or some other equally important issue that is, or should be, of global concern to all humanity. At least, that’s how I’ve always interpreted it.

Until Thursday.
Thursday, I had lunch with Carrie, a dear friend whom I had not seen for way too long.

I call her a “dear friend” today. I’m not sure if I would have done so before our Thursday lunch. Our friendship had been more of an accident, than an intentional act. We met through a mutual friend and, in less time than it takes to blink, the three of us were attached at the hip. We were a band of sisters.

We did everything together.
We laughed together.
We cried together.
We raged together.
We prayed together.
We escaped together.
We stayed together.

Until we didn’t.
Until our mutual friend decided we wouldn’t.
So we didn’t.

Without a word, without a nod, without a wave good-bye, Carrie and I accepted our fate.
We went our separate ways.
Deleted from each other’s lives.

But, Carrie did not delete me from her mailing lists. And when she sent out a group mailing inviting people to a workshop she is sponsoring, I received an invitation.
I thought perhaps she had sent it in error. In my darker moments, I was sure it was some sort of twisted plot to trap me uncomfortably in a corner and watch me pretend not to squirm. I ignored it for a while. Finally, I responded, politely declining her invitation.

Carrie wrote back. She had not invited our mutual friend.
Stunning!
The attached at the hip triplets that had turned into the attached at the hip twins had all returned to their former unattached selves.

Carrie and I met for lunch.
Thursday was crisp and dry, an unusual winter day in usually soggy Portland. We met at a local restaurant on Hawthorne Blvd. I got there first, but we had spotted each other as we were circling the neighborhood looking for parking.

Although I had only seen her head and shoulders through the car window, I knew she was impeccably dressed. Carrie is always impeccably dressed. Even when she is wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt and no make-up, Carrie looks impeccable.
Thursday, she was wearing lovely gray-ish, tweed-ish trousers, a black shirt and a fitted black jacket that whispered just above her hips. Impeccable. From her perfectly painted Carrie pink lips to her perfectly pointed black shoes peeking from beneath the cuffed hems of her trousers.

When she entered the restaurant and saw me, she smiled. Not just a polite, nice-to-see-you smile. Carrie smiled a smile that seemed to start all the way down at her toes. A smile that gathered strength as it traveled through her body until it finally exploded in a brilliant display of joy that lit the entire room.

We hugged hello.
It was 12:30. The tag end of what must have been a very hectic lunch rush. A waiter led us to our table. All the booths were full, so he sat us at a table that was situated smack dab in the middle of the small, very busy restaurant. There were only two other tables open. The rest of the tables were either occupied by diners or by the debris and dirty dishes that diners leave behind.

The waiter handed us our menus and disappeared.

Carrie and I ignored the menus. We leaned in closer toward the table and began to talk. We started with easy stuff. Non-threatening stuff. Stuff that could make us laugh. Stuff like silly things our children had done and learning how to bake using neither wheat nor sugar and how getting older sucks because, without glasses, the crisp, clear focus of youth is but a memory.

The waiter came back. Carrie squinted briefly at the specials board and ordered the quiche that topped the list. I pointed to the salad described at the bottom of the list of salads. The waiter jotted these down quickly and went away.

It’s funny. I know it must have been noisy in that restaurant, but Carrie was all I could hear. I don’t know if there was a child having a tantrum, or a person celebrating a birthday, or a couple busily discussing what gifts to buy for Christmas.

All I know was that our silence had been lifted and we talked.
We talked about our families. We talked about our work. We talked about our lives. And finally, we talked about our friend.

We talked about things that matter and that has made all the difference.