I'm setting the table for 20 tonight. I'll meet some of the guests for the first time, while others are those I would not want to imagine my life without.
I didn't know any of them a year ago before I came back home.
The monthly supper club was founded by Marvelous Mary, all arts and energy, and a passionate cook to boot. The danger of spending too much time with Mary and her husband, Howard, is that often your face hurts by the end of the night from excessive smiling and laughing. My business sidekick, Melissa, and her we-haven't-met-yet boyfriend join the fold tonight too. She's going to go very far professionally and it's exciting to share the start of her journey.
Charlie's still sleeping as I write, but I'm ready to set the table.
Tommorrow night my brother and some Buffalo buddies are joining us for Chinese take-out before we walk up the street to see Robert Cray. I saw Robert before his first Grammy in San Antonio, several times in Houston and a couple years ago in Jacksonville. While he clearly has no idea how long we've been running together, I've enjoyed the trip. He's always been mellow, I'm just getting there.
I've been listening to his music for the last couple of weeks in preparation for tomorrow and laughing to myself about where I was when each of the CDs came out.
With age comes the realization that it isn't so much the journey, but who is traveling with you.
I'm having lunch tomorrow with my first "steady" high school boyfriend. For about a year, I wore his class ring with a coordinated-to-the-royal-blue-stone full skein of embroidery floss wrapped around the back. The justification was to say it made the ring fit, the actuality was it drew even more attention to the mass of metal that said "I'm claimed."
This is not a grand reunion -- just a continued conversation. We've had several of these lunches over the years catching up on our respective kids and the latest in lives that would have seemed unimaginable in 1976. He's one of the good guys. Rock solid in ways it took me a long time to understand are very good.
The next 48 hours are an intoxicating blend of the once and future.
In this space, I refer to the partner who hired me as The Boss, not for an authoritiarian air, but because he's pretty much up there with Springsteen in the pantheon of my admiration. I've always been pretty good at doing my job, I learn something from him every day about how to do business.
I had another boss like that twice. I worked for him before I joined the world of horse racing and again before we left for St. Simons. I was perhaps a little too preoccupied in dealing with the complications of life at the time ( and life was particularly complicated in the first go round) to understand or appreciate all he gave me.
His name pops up in the comments on this blog occasionally as The Bossman and it always makes me smile.
I recently had to supply a quote for a biographical sketch. My mind didn't have to go too deep into the mental catalogue of the Harry Chapin music I've been listening to for 30 years.
"There's no straight lines make up my life And all the roads have bends. There's no clear cut beginnings. And so far, no dead ends."




Copyright 2005 Judi Griggs