Perchance

Sometimes you want to go on an alone walk. That was how I was feeling this past Sunday, both antisocial and restless. I’d been out for maybe a half an hour when I saw a woman walking a small dog coming toward me. I resigned myself to a polite hello when I saw she wasn’t a stranger, but a friend I hadn’t seen in ages. She is also a smart, kind, funny and radiantly lovely human being.

Of course there was hugging and overlapping it’s been forevers, and of course we fell into step together. Her spouse had taken a job out of town but they’d kept their house thinking to return someday, and she’d come back to facilitate a kitchen renovation. We talked about construction projects and moved onto our families before expanding to the neighborhood and the world these anxious days. Unsurprisingly, we feel the same.

We’d stretched out the walk to an absurd length and her pup needed water. We circled back to her house and chatted in the driveway some before she invited me in to see her soon-to-be redone kitchen. “That way, you’ll know the before,” she said. Inside was cozy, the conversation, flowing. The only thing missing was incentive to leave.

The sun had started to set when I stood up in earnest and put my coat on still talking about how much we still miss our late parents and the wisdom of the traditional Swedish death cleaning before a final hug and promise to stay in touch. I’d left home in a dead man’s float and returned like Diana Nyad.

Sometimes you want to go on an alone walk. Then, fate, say, in the form of a friend and her dog, intercedes, to turn what you wanted into exactly what you need.