Arabesque

I woke up from a strange dream, that put me back in graduate school in Texas. In the dream, I meet up with a dear friend who tells me he is getting married to his long standing girl friend. He invites me to the wedding, beaming, saying it will be lavish. I politely decline, a bit irked at his elation, and walk away, in search of my large red leather purse, which I seem to have lost track of in the course of our conversation. I finally find it, a female friend had it safely tucked away behind my chair, during a lecture we were both attending. In the dream my friend looks young, his black hair free of any grey, and I look young again, too. The day started quiet, as my son left for the weekend get together at one of his best friends' house, and my husband would be at work until evening. The sun came and went, it seems, all late morning and late afternoon. I turned off the news, the radio, and listened to the music of the wind chimes, the early spring birds, the fresh breeze, and my own quiet breathing. This was destined to be a very quiet day. My brain flooded with memories of quiet days when I was growing up. I was mostly ignored at family gatherings, left to my own devices, as I was a quiet and serious child, no one figured would get into trouble. So, I would wander around, in silence, away from the gathering, the chatter, that was irrelevant to my 10 year old mind, and look around the different rooms of whatever house we happened to be at. There was a dream like quality to those silent and solitary adventures, and perhaps that is why to this day, quiet days seem to always acquire an unreal, dream like quality. Perhaps that is why my dreams have always been so vivid, down to the most intricate details, of color, dress, conversations, food, weather, time of day. It 's like I never really existed as a child, since no one paid attention to me, or talked to me, so , on quiet days, it still feels like I don't exist. It is a bit unnerving, not necessarily unpleasant, it is just something that is a part of me, and that most people don't know a thing about, not even my husband and son. My parents had a lot of wealthy friends, with very large, fancy houses. One of my most favorite houses to be ignored in, was the house of my parents' friends, Margot and Jeff Cousee- Cambier. These people had traveled all over the world, and had rooms full of trophies from Asia and Africa. I used to be allowed,quiet docile child that I was, to wander the huge three story mansion at my leisure. I still remember the vague smell of lilacs and vanilla the house seemed permeated by. The conversations were always in French, as the wife was from Wallonia, which added a touch of extravagance to the whole atmosphere for a Flemish child. By then, I was 12, and understood already quite a bit, but the adults seemed to blissfully ignore that fact, so I was privy to bits and pieces of juicy information concerning all sorts of private matters. Margot's house had secret passage ways, which were a delight to me, and her house was one I always anticipated visiting, even though the experience was always a hauntingly lonely one. So, here I am, at 55, having a very quiet day, in a very small house, with no secret passage ways, or people speaking an exotic language, and maybe that is why I longed for my exotic friend from my graduate days, who now is married and far away, in an exotic land, speaking a language far more exotic than French, actually, several of them. A quiet day, pulling me back ,in my solitary contemplations and circumstances, to very quiet childhood days, by the sea, by the hills, in the city, in the country, filling my memories with scents as disparate as drying sun scented hay, to sand and ocean salt, to sandalwood incense and cigar smoke, and rich red wines wafting from  conversation absorbed adult relatives and friends. A la recherche du son perdu.