I see trees of green, red roses too… And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
A reader asked to meet, and we did so at the cidery where he had found the paper that graciously permits space for my column. We spoke and shared, and I learned — and perhaps he learned as well — and we parted, and I was the better for the experience. Earlier in that day, at the Shortridge post office, I saw an artist, a woman on whose team I had competed in a contest of “birding trivia,” and she told me that another teammate was going to — where else — the cidery, to sample an offering, and asked me if I was going to attend. What could I have said?
I try to keep a record of my interactions with people as a way to revisit the experience. Although I am not as memory-challenged as the character from the movie, “Memento,” I find that a written record helps me to recall those moments, and to relive the things that pleased me, and also, to endure again, whatever pains might have occurred. (I am less than meticulous in the recording of painful encounters, though.) But a recent meeting and far-ranging conversation with Steve, the reader who e-mailed me in May, reminded me again, of the interconnectedness of human beings, and how the string of my life has on it, beads of wonder.
While Steve and I were recently chatting at a table at the cidery, one of the servers approached us to see if we had what we needed. I know the server, and after Steve looked at him and asked a couple of questions, he determined that he knew him, as well. Steve is a minister who lived for a time in Australia, the place where Wes Homoya (“The Birdman of Indianapolis”) takes participants in his birding tours. Wes’ parents were across the countertop of the cidery on one of my recent forays, and while speaking of Australia, his mother mentioned that she had spent some time in my old town, St. Louis. And St. Louis is where some of Steve’s children live. I told Steve of the sights that I enjoyed there, including Tower Grove Park, Forest Park, and the City Museum.
Steve had previously told me that his daughter was a writer, and I met Zoe when the two of them espied me on a stool at the cidery, where I had come to roost — along with other birders — after a Wes-led tour of “Feathers and Fermentation.” But a bead of joy was crafted when I read her blog, “A Sideways Glance,” and her chronicle of the birth of “Roll With It” bakery in Irvington, which used to provide me with fresh-baked bread, sometimes brought to the counter for me by Tess Ireland and Corey Rutland’s young daughter. And the co-owner of this publication has a daughter I have known since she was young, and her childhood friend is Tess Ireland.
The people, places and things that connect me with Steve include my hometown of Pittsburgh, Penn. Steve commented on the University of Pittsburgh’s signature building, the Cathedral of Learning. I told him that I had lived very near that campus, and when I was young, worked in the library of the Cathedral.
I spoke to this paper’s creative director, Paula Nicewanger, to verify some of the details of this rumination, and she mentioned the “six degrees of separation.” But I like the idea of being the string along which move the beads of delight, and thinking to myself: What a wonderful world.