ANGELS ON YOUR PILLOW

It never ceases to amaze me how many really nice people are out there in the world. Like everyone else, I suppose I have my moments of doubt, but then a moment later something nice happens to restore my faith in humanity. 

I assure you the kindness and courtesy of strangers is alive and well, at least where I live.

The title of this piece comes from the wish a friend of mine used to wish me and other friends good night with. It is fun to remember how if she met me on the street we had to turn back and go and buy 2 bottles of Henkell Trocken Sparkling Wine, one of which we would immediately share and another for her to have another time.

I was always impressed by the friends that travelled when we were in school or after I graduated. I was always working all summer to pay for my education, since I had zip in the way of encouragement for my decision to continue my education in an area of my own interest.

I marvelled at my youngest sisters travels while still in school to several places in Europe though when I was 40, I could finally take her to upper east side New York to celebrate that landmark birthday. Fun to watch her photographed immediately in front of Van Cleef and Arpels jewellers too.

Strangely we lose touch with people. I hear of daughters of friends working in various cities and off to Paris to headquarters of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennesey, parent company of the luxury brands consortium); sometimes with their mothers in tow. As time passes however, the moving around breaks the connections and the address book gets to be a crossed out puzzle to decipher. Memories remain but they are from before not now.

Meanwhile, new friends surprise us. They, and we, are different people. Even the old friends we meet again have done a lot of living since we last saw them.

Marriage and other’s divorces and remarriages change the tone and mix as do children they have had, and now their children’s children come into the obligations they have. We meet in phone visits sometimes. Though still pretty good, we are not connected like we were in our misspent youth.

Still great though to think of table totally covered with glasses full of rum and cokes in Cuba and being able to tell the group to come and get some since we had so many waiters dancing attendance and were, as usual, accumulating friends effortlessly. Being drunk at 9 a.m. in St. Lucia with a dozen other fellow sufferers on a very bad trip was novel and thankfully never again necessary in later travels together.

Meanwhile, some of us have had to say goodbye to both our parents, though mercifully only I had the prostrating pain of losing a younger brother. Then again, others lost their siblings to sisters-in-law and estrangement in a different way, that was almost as final as mine, since some of them no longer ever meet as a family. Who could have anticipated or predicted any of this.

When you wake up smiling, more days than not, you can’t help but feel that life comes together as a mixture of hard work and some play and eventually you have more good days than bad and more good friends that stick with you than you ever expected.

You go to sleep grateful for being blessed with another decent day and wake up hoping it won’t be too cold or windy even though it’s winter. The sun obliges sometimes in shining down and cheering us all up when we most need it in this cold season.

I go to sleep thinking that Marianne, wherever she may now be, long ago gave me something I have used for all these years as the best wishes ever to those I love, that they might sleep and dream of beautiful things and have Angels on their pillows.