It was a dark, wet coastal night, and Michael and I were on our way home from the Bird Cage, his favourite restaurant. That wasn’t its real name, we just called it that because it had forty-foot ceilings. “Lots of headspace,” Michael would say, “so you can get some thinking done.”
We walked along the boardwalk that followed the contours of the bay, passing drug dealers and hookers as we made our way back home. We weren’t strangers to either of these groups, we just no longer played their game at street level.
Out of nowhere came a skateboarder, his noisy wheels clacking on the weathered boards, his attitude belying arrogance and rebelliousness. He flew by us, and in that instant I captured the thought in his eye: disdain for a sellout couple who were content with their boring, middle-class lives.
After he passed, I turned to Michael and said: “If he only knew.”
Michael laughed, and his reply has swum back to me on numerous occasions as I navigate the peaks and valleys of my life.
“He can’t know, and we could never tell him. Some things you can only know in the privacy of your own mind.”
Love it Margo!
Thanks Maude; you’re still my top blog fan!
So true Margo – what a great observation. I am also starting to realise that even though we would love everyone to somehow “see” or understand where we come from, what we have felt, what we have dealt with, even when it practically mirrors their own situation or experience (and for their benefit), sometimes life rules and others just have to live for themselves what we ourselves have had to survive.