I'm on my way home from work, making plans to be productive for myself. I was going to go grocery shopping for vegetables to make cabbage soup for the week. I really don’t like to grocery shop and it takes a lot of self convincing (which I had already done) to accept the fact that I have to go shopping. I psyched myself into shopping to make cabbage soup so that I could be healthier and get rid of all the toxins in my body. Well, who am I kidding…I need to loose 15lbs and I want to loose it fast!! The magic cabbage soup diet is supposed to do the trick.
So, there I was, driving home silently, continuing to convince myself to go grocery shopping when all of a sudden….my mommy called.
She said she had some time and wanted to know what I was doing for dinner. “Where mom, where do you want to eat.” I’m thinking I can at least get salad wherever we go, yes salad will be good then I can go shopping….. My mom said “How about Chinese?” Chinese are you crazy (I’m thinking this of course, you would never say that to your saintly mother), I can’t eat salad at a Chinese restaurant!! “Ok, meet me at Chin’s Pagoda. I guess I could at least get seaweed soup, that should count like the cabbage!!
Ok, so there I was, Chin’s Pagoda, being non-productive, kicking and screaming all the way there….
We were talking, when I noticed an old friend entering the resteraunt. I haven’t talked to them in quite a while, and since the last time I talked with this friend, I really didn’t have much else to say. But there he was, with his family. I did what any normal, avoidant old friend would do, and pretend I didn’t see them. I told my mom of course, that they were there so she wouldn’t blow my cover, as I tried so desperately not to make eye contact with them.
We continued our ‘non cabbage soup’ dinner, and suddenly, in walked a woman who appeared to have cancer. It appeared that way because she was wearing a hat with no hair underneath. Her and a friend came in to pick up a ‘to go’ order. It looked to me from the side that she could be my old baby-sitter, from when I was 7. I was currently 37, and she watched me and my brothers when I was 7 and they were 8 and 4. She had a son 4 and newborn twins, who I very motherly took care of. As a 7 year old, I was fascinated with babies and loved going over there to help take care of them. She was very good friends with my mom and dad and my BF Chris’ parents. That’s how she ‘got the job’. Lucky her, my brothers were a nightmare!
I said to my mom, “That looks like Carol S”. My mom looked, and her back was to us then, and I said, “Does she have cancer?” My mom said, yes she does, and I heard she’s very sick. Wow, I hadn’t heard that. There she was, this lady I really admired in my past, so joyful always, so much an icon to me who could handle 6 kids under the age of 8 with such grace and laughter. This was an old friend who deserved eye contact.
I stopped eating the seaweed soup, and hurried over to greet her. She recognized my mother quickly, as she stared at me and looked into my eyes and said, “You can’t be DeJaVu!” “Hi”, I said, “How are you?” (Stupid thing to say DJV). She looked very tired, and smiled and said, “I just had a treatment and I’m very tired now, but what can you do.” I asked about her kids, the twins, how are they. As I asked about the kids, I pictured them as babies. I hadn’t seen the ‘kids’ since I was 7, so to me, they were still little babies. The twins were 30 and the little baby girl had 3 children of her own. Carol had mentioned it was her grand children that kept her going. I couldn’t believe it, she grew up, got married and had children? The other twin was in jail, broke his probation, “he’s a drug addict” Carol said. Where was I when all this was happening to those babies I helped take care of? I had missed the whole thing.
We reminisced a bit about my BF’s dad, Jim. He crossed over 15 years now from cancer. He was our common bond, how we new Carol in the first place. I was thinking now that they still had a common bond, sharing the same form of ‘exit point’ from this world to the next.
‘Order to go’ we hear in the background. Time to say our goodbyes. What do you say? (Make it better than your opening line DJV…) It had been quite a while since I seen her, perhaps Jim’s funeral. It probably would be another long span, and so I wondered, ‘was this my final goodbye’? I gave her a great big hug, and told her I loved her. At least if it was my final words to her, I wanted her to know, I did love her, regardless of the time in between. She took care of me and I had remembered it! I wanted her to know I remembered it because of the loving way in which she cared for us.
Back to the ‘non cabbage soup’ dinner. Ok, now how am I going to go back to my seat with out making eye contact with that other old friend I don’t want to say hi to? I know…. head down, run for your seat. Oh no, I think they saw us. “DJV, is that you?” “I recognized your mom, but didn’t recognize you from the back of your head.” Is it me? Is it me? It’s not like you haven’t seen me in 30 years, you know it’s me. You knew it was my mom and you knew it was me, you just wanted to avoid saying hi to me like I was avoiding saying hi to you, until our paths crossed right in front of each other and one of us had to say something!
I smiled and suffered through some small talk, and said the courteous, congenial, “It’s great seeing you!” You hypocrite! ‘Is that you DJV, is that really you DJV?’ No it’s not me! It wasn’t great seeing you! Why did I say that? I think it was the seaweed. It must be some natural drug or something, like a marijuana plant.
Why do we do that? I know I’m not the only socially correct hypocrite out there!
Why couldn’t I have been honest but polite and said, “It didn’t matter to me one way or the other running into you at this very moment in my life. You have treated me poorly in the past and although I have forgiven you for your unfavorable actions that you have bestowed upon me, I don’t find it necessary to associate with you any longer.”
We don’t have the guts to be that honest, but for me, I guess, I just don’t have the heart. It’s ok to see someone from your past that wasn’t so nice to you, and acknowledge their shared existence with you in this world, and move on to the next moment peacefully. In all honesty, it wasn’t so painful to say hello, and I actually caused myself more stress and tension avoiding the inevitable God delivered moment. If I just would have said, hello in the first place, I could have spared myself the uneasiness I felt causing me to choke on my seaweed soup!
Exit, stage left. Meal complete, here comes the fortune cookies, and the check (hey who ordered that?) Finally, off to go grocery shopping.
It’s ok DJV, all you have to do is go to the front section of the store, get in and out of there quickly. Oh look, a close spot. Hurry, hurry, before you change your mind. Is that Mr. Levan, my old forth grade teacher? He looks directly into my eyes as I look into his. I think he recognized me, as I was recognizing him. He was leaving the store, as I was entering it. Was he thinking the same thing I was thinking? ‘Oh please don’t say hi!’
I scurried to get into the store as my past literally passed me by on the street! I reflected on the 2 hours that just went by and wondered if God was trying to tell me something? Was this my ‘life review’ that we have when we cross over? Do people, soon before they die, experience what I’ve experienced today? How would we know since they’re not here to tell us, “I saw it coming!” If God wasn’t trying to prepare me for my inevitable death this particular week, then what was he so ironically trying to tell me?
I went kicking and screaming to the ‘non cabbage soup’ dinner where He precisely and deliberately put 3 distinctively different people from my past onto my ‘path’.
Coincidence or God-incident?
One thing I knew for sure was that I was actually in the grocery store shopping to make myself a week long dinner. It’s a miracle! If the sky is not falling and hell hasn’t frozen over, it must mean only one thing…..(hand over heart) ‘I’m coming to join you honey! I’ll be the one with the pot of cabbage soup!”
I actually feel like I've grown....up!
