Shouldn't…but Do

Let’s talk about hairballs. Not the benign, partly-digested food sausages that choke up kitties, but rather, the real thing – the smelly, stringy gelatinous critter that is lurking in the u-joint of your bathroom sink.

Leave one of those beasties in the craw of your drain too long and you’re doomed to personal confrontation. It was, however, my good fortune last night to do just that.

I say “good fortune” because said beastie was discovered while replacing a leaky faucet, a feat made possible only with the guidance and assistance of my good friend, The Neighbor.

To quote The Neighbor, upon viewing the sludge-ridden material lodged in my drain, … “that is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.”

Now this, by itself, is an accomplishment. The Neighbor is an undaunted woman who, some time ago, uttered the memorable words “I’m going in!” as we both cowered outside my basement door one very early morning overhearing what sounded like a pitched battle between my cat and a rabid tapir. Just two months ago, she talked me off my roof, after I flew up with a hammer (and a cell phone) – to beat into oblivion any shingle or vent skirt unwise enough to admit mice to my attic – belatedly remembering my dislike of heights. And a couple of years ago, it was The Neighbor who waited with me as a surgeon cut out my child’s ruptured appendix, and who never blinked when the surgeon produced a photograph of that rotten, exploded organ.

So, you can imagine my delight.

Although unacquainted before I relocated here years ago, I am convinced, on reflection, that one of the reasons I landed in this small burg was to meet the likes of The Neighbor.

The Neighbor is one of many friends of mine who “can do.” With their hands, their hearts and their minds, they cook, write, build, live and love their lives.

Strange is the unseen library on whose shelves the books of these lives reside, connected sometimes by proximity, sometimes by commonality, some by seeming chance. Catalog is impossible. Physical hyperlinks of connection too fantastic to be believed, but nonetheless real.

It is neither destiny nor divinity that designs these transits, but an as-yet unarticulated quality still slumbering in the twilight thought of human consciousness.

That connective quality, sometimes quietly, sometimes viciously, tracks through the everyday, usually only guessed at after it has moved on, leaving us, among friends, to wonder.

And to work. For without The Neighbor, the leaky faucet would still be stealing my energy and my water, the drain would have seeped back to me all I sought to let go. Too much going in, too little going out. Although embroidered in the countenance of a friend, the corrective threads of the energy are unmistakable.

Sometimes it takes a friend to help you find the stuff that chokes, the lurking, nasty stuff you didn’t even know was there.

Thanks Neighbor.