It
was a late summer afternoon in the little park.
She sat at a wooden table under a willow tree, drawing rather
absentmindedly in a thick, heavy sketchbook.
The sun was low, and the willow leaves rustled and sparkled with
orange-yellow light. I didn’t know her
well—she was really a friend of my sister—but she had always been kind and considerate toward me. We’d discussed
books and art and philosophy on a few occasions, and she even lent me Frank
Herbert’s Dune after we talked about The Lord of the Rings. We discussed the Gormenghast trilogy, too, even though I had only skimmed it once or
twice. She referred to it as “Gormenghastly.” She was smarter, deeper,
and more well-read than any other high schooler I knew, and we’d both recently
graduated from different schools. What I
found most remarkable about her was her openness to being just what she was: smart,
thoughtful, well-read, and artistic. It
wasn’t a source of pride or arrogance for her; it was just that she felt no shyness
in possessing those qualities and letting the world know of them (which was so
unlike the rest of us, who saw those things as liabilities and vulnerabilities
that should be hidden from our peers). What a source of courage and inspiration she
was, without even knowing it! She was a
truly agreeable person, but one who also liked to stay in her own little
world. We chatted casually for a few
minutes, as the road of life seemed to spread out endlessly before us. When we parted on that late afternoon, under
the shimmering willow tree, we both quietly suspected that we might not see
each other again for a very long time (which proved to be the case), and that
we would be virtual strangers the next time we met. We were like two people from the same village
waiting on a pier for separate ocean-bound ships, great, steady vessels that
would take us to strange, exotic ports on widely-divergent continents, places from
which there would be no easy return.
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