Sharing

I was thrilled when my phone rang at 5:30 p.m. last night and it was Jacqueline asking me if I wanted to go to the movies. We had planned to get together a couple of Saturday nights ago, but had played phone tag until it was too late to do anything.

She had just finished studying at Starr King, which is across the street from my dorm.

“Shall I come up to your room?” she asked.

I met her in the courtyard and ushered her through the three locked doors to the second floor. Upon entering my room, her eyes immediately fell on the yard-square mosaic felt piece that I had been working on.

“Oh, those are my colors,” she said as she felt the wool’s softness.

I quickly folded the square piece on its diagonal and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “It is quite gorgeous.”

“I was going to make it into a poncho, but if I cut in half, they’ll be half for you and half for me and that will save me a whole lot of work,” I said definitively.

She feigned my suggestion away. “I’m big, it won’t fit me.”

I wrapped it around her again. “It sure does,” I said.

The idea of a beautiful black woman from Alaska, with dreadlocks piled high on her head and halfway down her back, proudly wearing one part of a beautiful felt piece, and I the other, makes me feel extraordinarily lucky.

Life is exceedingly rich.