Risking A Yes in Dark Times

I had decided I wasn’t going to go.  After graduation, we had scattered — and in the scattering struggled, each of us, to find a toehold in the world that had our names on them.  At that time in history for women aiming to grow into their gifts and dreams, this was all consuming work, only possible by dint of focus and small intentional steps.

Too many years, too much distance and disconnection seemed to divide me from those college years when I shared a dorm and creative endeavors with an extraordinary group of women who became the closest friends I’ve ever had.

Too much had been left to an unintended abyss of separateness, I felt.  Too many stories to undo or rewrite.  Different paths, a few old hurts, misunderstandings…all of this congealed to make a once-lovely segment of life’s journey a dark one – unilluminated by visitations, like a room I’d ceased to visit, or even to stand before, not knowing what might emerge.

Then came an email from Palo Alto.

“I need to talk to you.”  From one of the old close ones, with whom I had not even exchanged a Christmas card in more than 30 years.

I stalled.  I equivocated.  Would X be there, too?  Would Y?  Would it be too painful to be in the presence of these so precious in my formative years, with nothing to say to one another?

A few more emails.  Cautiously, I opted for limited exposure – a day.  Nothing more.

Once on campus, I picked up my reunion satchel, donned my lanyard (was I really doing this, I asked myself), and headed to my dorm for the overnight.  I’d no sooner unpacked my coffee maker, when there was a knock on the door.  My old “bestie,” just in from the Midwest by way of Yale.  In minutes, the Palo Alto companion.  Then, the friend from New York.

What had we been saying to one another, that day some 50 years ago, as we stood in line waiting for the Commencement procession?  Where were we….?

We started talking and couldn’t stop.  Couldn’t stop looking at each other.  Nothing, actually, had changed.  Nothing at all.  The years had held it all – or we had, in our hearts.  The conversation, left suspended 50 years ago, taken up again…

Now, there were grandchildren, a husband’s Alzheimer’s, early forced retirement, career detours, books and children, partners, and the crushing silence where those who’d already left us hovered.  Across the wasteland of half a century, we prodigal daughters had come home to one another.

                                                                                        ♥

We enter this season of Advent, each and. every one of us, with dark places we don’t want to enter.  Places we find all manner of justifications for avoiding.  What is yours this season?  What darkness are you avoiding, and is the reason worthy of you?  I had to learn the hard way that mine wasn’t.

As I set out for my reunion, with the lowest of possible expectations, I wasn’t thinking of the Advent story.  Wasn’t thinking of the risks Mary models in her assent to the complete unknown of a complex web of new relationships.  Only now do I see her wisdom and maturity:  it is ONLY by taking risks that we face off against our demons of caution, defensiveness, and exaggerated self-protection.

I ended up staying a second night.  The last evening, my friend from Palo Alto, the one who started me on the idea of showing up, accompanied me into a dark rainy night as we headed from a reception back to the dorm where we were staying.  Under umbrellas, we were in no hurry; it was one of those leisurely strolls we’d so often taken together in the old days…her telling me a story about a classmate I’d never really known, the conversation going in and out, weaving here and there, as they do between friends who know each other deeply.  The rain was gentle and warm, the country night pitch dark.  Our feet knew where they were going, simply following the flow of talk…and I felt such comfort and trust in the deep affection of all the years…and gratitude for the faithfulness with which she’d sustained this for both of us.

We didn’t talk about the future, where our lives would be going after this.  We were merely there, putting one foot ahead of the other in a dark night, the warmth of friendship restored.

How could I have thought that refusing the risk was the better way?

We turned a familiar bend in the path, and up ahead saw our destination.  The blazing beacon of the dorm that was, for tonight, our home away from home, as it had been so many years ago.  It was an image I have carried with me into Advent, a dark untended path now alive with a light that most unexpectedly shines brightly into the years ahead.  Friendships revived, a road into the dwindling years — with their own forms of darkness awaiting — revelation.