What a trip this one was. Activity is wonderful, and I loved being with my children, my sisters and brothers, my Dad, my nieces and nephews and my friends – but, as usual, I forgot to leave any white space in my days. Almost without exception, every moment was PACKED: lunches, dinners, museums, long walks, shopping, helping Anand move to a new apartment, helping Cathleen prepare for her trip to Israel, attending a wedding and a graduation – and it was all fabulous.
But there was no time to take it all in, no time to think about what I was doing or what it all means. As Paula used to say, I need time to catch up with myself.
Now here I am sitting in a restaurant in Chicago, waiting for my flight to Delhi. I have six hours to wait and I feel like I just won a small lottery. Six hours! Nothing to do!
Yesterday I attended Rebecca and John’s wedding. Rebecca is the daughter of my dear childhood friend Martha and I planned my trip specially to be able to attend her wedding. It was a spectacular celebration at an ocean estate and the guests were dazzling and beautiful. I had a grand time taking photographs and some of the women were so pretty I had to restrain myself from following them around and making a nuisance of myself.
But it was this man who caught my eye, in amidst the brilliant conversation and the swirls of laughter and old friends meeting after many years:
Watching him sit there alone on the terrace, contemplating the ocean, you would never guess that nearly two hundred people were just behind him, having the time of their lives.
Who knows what he was thinking? Maybe he was just waiting for his wife or girlfriend to come back from the bathroom, maybe he was trying to figure out how much the whole reception had cost, maybe his feet hurt and he was taking a little rest – I don’t know. I just know his silence and sense of quiet appealed to me, and I took the photograph to remind me how important it is to stop and reflect, how crucial it is to sit still, especially when life is busy and it seems there is no time even to pause, let alone reflect.
