Castles

4/21/2011

A few years back some people got together and changed time. I don’t mean they set their watches back for daylight savings, or wound their grandfather clocks, they actually changed our concept of what time is. It seems that the old ‘time’ didn’t work very well with great distances or at the sub-atomic level. These really smart folks, physicists, scientists, and mathematicians all, couldn’t quite get their equations to equate. They would plug in their functions, constants, and variables and such, and when they started integrating and differentiating, these equations that describe the universe would blow up right in their faces. It seemed that the biggest constant of all, time, wasn’t really constant after all. And so they changed it. They simply redefined it to match their expectations. I was wondering about all this the other day as I thought about yesterday.

Yesterdays

I had no idea what I was doing. The urge had just come upon me and I was helpless to resist. I fumbled out one of my bent business cards hurriedly, scribbled my personal e-mail address on the back. In the dim light of the pub, I had to bend over close to the table top to make sure it was spelled correctly and was half-way legible. I looked up at her and she was smiling.

“May I send you an e-mail?” I asked sheepishly. “Oh, sure”, she replied. My heart skipped. I’m certain that she could tell I was blushing inside. It had been over four decades since I had last done this and I was nervous and I hoped my hand wasn’t shaking. She wrote her email address down on the back, and handed the card to me. I had just exchanged contacts with a girl who was not Diana.

To go out, to have dinner, to make a date, semantics seem to be important these days. I know that the rules are very different now. What does it really mean? Two people get together for casual conversation, pleasant company, a chance to get to know one another. Still, I’m wondering what the subtle implications are. That word “date”, it carries a weight of its own as if some commitment were intrinsically implied. It gets thrown out there and then transforms as it travels through the air. Saying one thing and meaning another, the world is littered with kind intentions.

Today

I had pulled the Z out of the garage, planning the short trip to the south side allowing for traffic. For a manual transmission car, the 350Z is comfortable in traffic. You stay mainly in the middle gears, 3^rd and 4^th, downshifting to use engine braking for slowing down, and of course, on takeoff from stop. I was working the gears smoothly across town on side roads, avoiding the big congested arteries of the Charlotte metro area. I needed to be at the restaurant at 6PM. Should I be early? I didn’t want to be too early, she might think I’m insecure. And late was out of the question. You cannot pay that disrespect to a lady by even a minute. Timing was everything.

I had allowed extra minutes for the commute, so I made a quick stop at the International Market for some Thai food supplies. The lines were long, and by the time I got back on the road, I was right on schedule but without a time cushion. Suddenly an accident had the road snarled as people merged into the left lane. Slow. Slow. My watch kept ticking and I was frantically recalculating the way. As we slowly passed the wreck, I pulled out and quickly decided the freeway was the only chance to make it on time.

Fortunately, with a fast car you can, under certain conditions, compress time. You simply find ways to cover the distance in a shorter duration. As I pulled onto I485, the traffic was moving along at 70-75, so I figured there were no local police about. I downshifted, and moved to the inside lane, steadily accelerating until I was passing the cars expeditiously. With five miles to cover, I was fortunate to run into minimal traffic, the Z easily compressed the time, and in short order, I was pulling off onto Rea Road. Somehow, I hit all greens running down to the shopping center. I spotted Rudy’s Italian Ristorante on the left. After a quick u-turn, I was pulling into the parking lot with a minute to spare. I trotted up to the front door and opened it at exactly 6PM. There is a certain satisfaction I find in punctuality, having the ability to compress or elongate time as needed, and when I opened the door of Rudy’s, I was feeling pretty satisfied.

Looking around the small bar near the front, I searched for her. I didn’t see her at first, and had to do a second scan. Finally I spotted her. She was sitting in the corner seat at the bar I blinked and tried to keep my mouth from dropping open. She looked stunningly beautiful. I mustered my courage, needing reinforcement, when she looked up at me smiling and provided it with a friendly wave. I walked up eagerly and sat down beside her, and said hello to Roni………..

As if in a dream, you remember your yesterdays. They become like building blocks to construct your past. Years may dim many of the details, but these memories and events are the stuff of life. You must find a place to make your stand, so you marry someone and together you build a valiant castle with ramparts and moat, and watchtowers, and these yesterdays are like the massive stones that you build it from. My castle is a strong one. It was started many years ago, and it was built with love and care. The walls of my castle are thick and they always protected us and even though in those days it enclosed us, there was always openness and fresh air and magnificent vistas and unbridled freedom. It gave us a feeling of quiet confidence that no matter what happened, no matter what the elements flung at us, together we would always weather it. But things change. When the thing you are protecting ceases to exist, you are left living in a shell. You find yourself alone within the walls, and you tend to raise the drawbridge, and cling to your yesterdays…………...

The restaurant was one of those family type Italian bistros, with some nice ambience, and that kind of welcome that the Italians seem to have patented. Since neither of us had been there before, we had decided earlier to check it out from the bar before committing to a meal. Roni seemed to be OK with the place, and I was getting hungry, so after we had sipped some tuscan red, I approached the greeter for a table. The greeter was Rudy himself, or Rodolfo, I suppose, to his friends. Short, with balding hair, he was right out of central casting for “Godfather” movies. He was dressed in a tropical shirt and jeans. I guess if you are the owner, the dress code doesn’t apply.

“Hi. Yes, I think we would like to try your specials, can you fit us in?” I queried, looking around at the nearly empty dining room.

“Oh, do you have a reservation?” he asked, smiling back.

“Ah, no, uh, I didn’t, Oh Boy”, I stammered and started looking around at the empty chairs.

“We are full, full”, he proclaimed. “Here look at my book. See for your self”.

“No, no I believe you.” Uh, well we could always go to the Mexican restaurant next door, I thought. I looked at Roni, and she seemed to be waiting for me to take charge. I took Rudy aside and gave some really sorrowful looks. I would have tried the old $20 bill in the shirt pocket routine, but he was the owner. Probably would have been counter-productive.

“Look, Rudy, this is the first date with my companion and I really wanted to show her a wonderful dinner. I hear your gnocchi is excellent. Do you think you could possibly slip us in, maybe before a later reservation? I promise we will eat fast.” I pleaded my case. He looked over at Roni and then back at me. He started nodding his head sympathetically.

“I’ll see what I can do”, he said, winking at me.

Being a man of my age and native Italian to boot, I think Rudy felt my angst. It probably didn’t hurt any that Roni was by far the best looking lady in the place. We went back to the bar, and after a short few minutes, a waiter approached and announced that they had a table waiting. The location was excellent. We were out of the mainstream and away from the bunched tables in the main section. Thank you Rudy!

Roni was a wonderful conversationalist, articulate and witty. She was a flight attendant with seniority, so she got the juicy international routes. She was based in Detroit, but lived in the area. I was totally fascinated. Here I was having dinner with a jet-setter. I wanted to know about all of that really glamorous stuff, and she humored me with a few details. I kept telling myself, don’t stare, talk slowly, don’t talk about yourself. But I was surprised how easily the conversation came. We talked and ate and the dinner went by in a comfortable give and take. I had made a pact with myself that I would not talk much about my past life. First of all, I didn’t want to bore her to tears and secondly I didn’t want her to feel I was still living in the past. Diana is a part of me and always will be, but the grieving had stopped at a year.

The time just flew, and after a relaxed and unhurried dinner, we finished our wine. I noticed the waiters were scouting our progress intently and surmised they probably needed the table. Roni and I finished up and decided to have a coffee at the bar before calling it a night. Unfortunately the bartender was a bit overburdened with the three customers he had, so we decided to find a coffee shop. I followed Roni to a Starbucks and we finished off the evening with a satisfying vanilla latte. She confided to me that she had not dated in four years, and that she had been extremely nervous about our “date”. At first I thought she was telling me that just to make me feel better, but I saw in her eyes that she was being honest. I really liked her.

“You are so easy to be with”, I gushed like a schoolboy. I then proceeded to make a real fool out of myself by promising not to hit on her. She graciously let that one pass. It’s a crime sometimes what comes out of your mouth when you are off balance. And it had been such a long time since I felt this alive being with someone so nice, it had me teetering. As we ended our “date”, I wanted her to know that I was still too fragile emotionally for anything other than a friendship. But I also wanted her to know that I had a marvelous time. It was as if a door had reopened for me and I didn’t want it to close. I did want to see her again. So I went ahead boldly and asked if she would accompany me to a festival the next weekend and she said she would like that. We parted with a gentle hug and it was over. I cruised home on surface streets below the speed limit, reflecting on the evening. Had I just cheated on Diana? Was her memory now tarnished? Why was I torn inside? With relative ease, I had enjoyed an evening with a lovely, interesting woman. The openness I felt before suddenly began to diminish. I was retreating back into the safe confines of my fortress.

As luck would have it, Roni had the wisdom and grace to cancel our follow-up meeting, our next “date” was not to be. She told me that she was not ready for “dating’ after all, she wasn’t ready to commit to anything and thought it was better if we didn’t see each other again. She was right. We agreed to remain friends, though, to correspond occasionally and maybe see each other through mutual friends. And then I realized that Roni also lived in a castle and while hers was probably built for a different reason than mine, it was serving the same purpose. There was this wide chasm, a distance barrier between us. We had only been looking across at each other from the tops of our respective castle’s walls.

Tomorrows

I often wonder if time really exists at all. Is it simply some construct of the human mind that can be whimsically revised any time we choose? Does any other creature on this earth besides man know about it, or even care? What will those learned technocrats decide in another thousand years? If yesterdays are the building blocks of our lives, then what are the tomorrows. I want to believe that they make up the mortar, the stuff that holds it all together. Tomorrows give us the reasons for going on. For now, our castles remain as towering fortresses, monuments to our yesterdays. But I would like to someday do what that techno-group did. I want to redefine my own time and make it fit my purpose. I will embrace all my tomorrows. To quote an old song, “Every form of refuge has its price”. Only we decide when that price becomes too high. I hope that price doesn’t grow too great for Roni or me and that someday, we will have the courage to lower the drawbridges forever.