“You have to take risks. We will only
understand the miracle of life
fully when we allow the
unexpected to happen.”
– Paulo Coelho
It was still mostly dark when we slipped into the backyard to greet the morning. Daytime temperatures still wander into the high 90s and low 100s, this morning was 72 degrees. In the still desert air, this brings a chill.
Hannah, one of our three geriatric cats, had already been outside once, poking around the backyard to make sure all was clear. Her first run in the morning had the appearance of a night watchman making his rounds, checking the locks on doors. In her case, it was checking for lizards or other small creatures. When she felt it was ‘safe,’ she headed in for breakfast, only to return in the full daylight to be sure she missed nothing.
Joanna is visiting with us again. We took our place in the dark, feet up, to watch the sun come and to supervise Hannah’s work. Over the years Joanna has become our unofficially adopted daughter. When she is ‘home,’ it is like she actually lives with us. We sat in the cool desert air, our quiet voices the only recognizable continuity to the blackness of the morning. Everything around us cloaked in a shroud masking its presence.
The stars were brilliant in the early morning sky, standing as sentinels against the unrelenting approach of daylight. They seemed bold and firm in the heavens, only to be overwhelmed by the breaking of a new dawn. As they faded in the morning light, everything around us began to take shape.
In a short few minutes, the sun poked its head over the ridges of the Catalina Mountains to the east painting the Cacti and Desert Spoons and Agave with shades of pastel greens. Since it is monsoon season, many of the cacti are blooming, and a wear brightly colored flowers on their tops like a group of high fashion women attending an important social event…the variety and richness of hues and shades unappreciated without the light of day.
You never know, and maybe you shouldn’t…
Joanna and I began a habit of early morning meetings at an Einstein’s Coffee shop on the Northwest corner of West Big Beaver and Crooks in Troy, Michigan over a decade ago.
There was another darkness, however, that overshadowed our meetings in those days. It was the darkness of unfamiliarity. She and I were cloaked in shrouds of gender, age, culture and race…the unknown of who we were. We drank tea (her) and coffee (me), working on life topics. At least that is what we thought.
In the darkness of our morning skies, life and business topics were the sentinels that guarded our relationship. They were the objects that had brought purpose to our meetings.
Then something started to happen in the desert of our minds. The sun began to rise, and although the topics continued, they began to be painted over by a realization of the beauty of a different dawning day. The pastels of our personalities emerged, and as the rains came to water the fertile earth of our minds, we started noticing the beauty and richness of color emerging from the spirit within each of us.
We had thought we were meeting to talk about moving forward in life. That did happen. What we found, however, was something much more meaningful than that. We found each other.
She would write later of the unlikely nature of our relationship…this strange friendship between a sixty-year-old white man and young African American woman. An implausible relationship growing from two strangers meeting in a coffee-shop in Michigan. By now Molly was in the mix. It became something special and the three of us knew it.
Molly and I left Troy in 2008 for San Diego, but Joanna came right along with us – in our hearts. She also came west a number of times during those years, most notably the weekend my younger sister died in Missouri. She stayed on with Molly providing love and support.
The story of our friendship gets better. Joanna did get a job as a junior buyer with a truck manufacturing company in Detroit. She did so well that she was offered a job in Stuttgart, Germany with the parent company, Mercedes-Benz. She took that position, and the two of us met a time or two when I was in Europe on business. Three years there led to a promotion as a project manager back in Detroit, with a subsequent promotion in production operations.
“Joanna is visiting with us again. We took our place in the dark, feet up, to watch the sun come…,"and we are grateful….grateful for the love, and the brightly colored threads that bring splendor to the tapestry of our lives.
She’ll be gone in the morning, but the pleasant afterglow of her visit will linger as we carry one another in our hearts and minds….
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