The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you. Jean de la Bruyere 

 One of my best legacy lessons is to be someone’s first call.  I was someone’s first call this week and it was joyous.  When someone dear to you has had a fine day doing something new in a place that will soon be called home and they call to tell you all about it you have entered a special place in their heart.  When only you would understand the joy they feel riding home in the dark after a day filled with new people and places you have met them where they are.  When there is more listening than talking on your part, when the laughter and tears fill the same conversation, when everyone hangs up feeling heard new roads have been traveled together. When you can’t stop smiling hours after the conversation ends you know like you know that forever is now.

I was someone else’s first call after arriving home from some very long and wonderful travel.  Meet we must in our usual place the sooner the better. And so we did among the lunch crowd, minus our usual server in a crowded neighborhood pub. Catching up on the fun and laments of the months we’d been apart, laughing and concerned, a tear or two, many more laughs and quips and hugs later we take a breath and notice there is no one left in the place.  Such is the joy of being together.

Someone’s first call of the morning; you in today? On my way in now.  Then it will be worth it for me to come down.  Every once in a while you meet a new old friend.  Someone that has traveled your road walked your walk and thinks your think…even though you just met.  They have some of what you don’t and you have something too and you pick up where you left off even though you’ve just begun.  You love their family and they know what you’re thinking from the words you’ve written.  It’s glorious and seldom that this comes along.  It is a blessing full of exchanging ideas and ideology and technical blah blah that you would never ask anyone else for fear of being….something.

Someone’s first call to someone else can be a delight for you as well.  Long overdue we meet at another usual place midway between three here and theres. My Sister’s boy is her light at any moment he is near her.  He is precious in his sweetness and love for her.  He is spoiled because he is such a wonderful about to be teenager with none of the manic depressive drama to be seen…yet. We three adults share a bond that can never be broken, made of unspoken words, sleeping on the floor and just being within whisper range of each other at the lowest point of our lives to date. Those days behind us we revel in our time around the table and in this child.  He is a nonstop delight and can talk to his Aunt incessantly.  Aunt Terri remember when…Aunt Terri remember…Aunt Terri yeah I like rap…such and such and Lil Wayne,  whatever happened to Lil Wayne…how could we not laugh and delight in this wonderful kid who just asked his 52 year old Aunt, who’s only knowledge of rap is on a door, whatever happen to Lil Wayne.  And so the night went with its constant stream of Aunt Terri’s, a new menu that caused all the food to be late, an amazing and funny server who kept everyone from being hangry…a night to remember because of course we all smiled all the way home.

These weren’t just conversations they were inscriptions on our hearts.  Warmth and sharing and oh yeah there were words too.  One of Yogi Berra’s nuggets of wisdom, “It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much” might have rung true this week were it not for the satisfaction had by all.  Everyone was completely pleased with our cleverness and each other. It was conversational perfection because we talked in present tenses.