I have never watched the tv show "Touched by an Angel" but when it was popular, it was pervasive enough that the idea and plot details sunk into my brain through saturation osmosis. I remember mentally gagging at the concept and even now, I cannot logically accept the idea that angels exist and walk among us. At least, angels that look like Roma Downey or have actual wings and halos. Or lounge on furniture fashioned of clouds, plucking harps, or blowing trumpets.
But, yet, despite my skepticism of the popular and religious depictions of angels, past and present incidents and people in my life cause me to take pause and re-consider the possibility of angels. Who has not been in accident that could have been much worse or had a near miss in a dangerous or perilous situation and wondered if the divine intervened to save us? Who has not experienced the kindness of a stranger or the unexpected act of an acquaintance or the continued words or deeds of a special person that has made one stop and wonder if these people are angels? Maybe, we don't ponder these incidents too closely because there are no real answers or no real answers that we can accept and reconcile logically with our beliefs on religion, fate, and free will, without feeling like it would be part of an episode of a sappy television show.
Given as my brother recently observed, that "I am not known for my driving skills," I certainly have experienced a number of near misses while driving and one serious accident that could have been much worse. Like the time that I was en route to a bar review class on my state's mandatory auto insurance scheme and was involved in a serious car accident (that was not my fault). I was in the left-hand turn lane when a youngster in a brand-new mustang pulled out of a side street and broadsided my car, going about 60 mph. I was listening to a Billie Holiday cassette* one moment and then next moment, my air bag had exploded. I smelled and saw smoke, and panicked as I thought that my car was on fire. I don't recall the actual moment of impact. When I got out of the car, I was shaking and my legs were weak (not in a good way). I was bruised and sore but no suffered no permanent damage to myself (the car was totalled).**
And certainly, like Blanche, I have had to depend on the kindness of strangers. I drove a series of junk cars through college and more than a few people stopped to help me, to offer a ride when the cars invariably and often broke down. And I am always amazed and gratified at the kind comments or compliments that various strangers have given me at times when I have felt particularly low. Not to mention all the acts of kindness and help from my family and my friends.
This brings me to Jesse. I am not sure how to explain Jesse. Or that I should even try to explain him. Jesse is a man. Jesse is my friend. I met Jesse when I was 23, mid way through my 24th year. I was engaged to another man and had begun planning my wedding. I was in a big city with a friend. We were at a club with dancing and drinking. I was passionate and impulsive at times in my 24th year and could be engaged in crazy exploits if sufficiently lubricated with spirits and/or with friends. Otherwise, I was shy and feared rejection. On this hot night, my friend was elsewhere and I went upstairs where "alternative music" played. I was not anywhere near buzzed but I was high on my first trip to a big city, the noise and the people and the colour.
I saw Jesse standing on the edge of the dance floor, appearing lost in thought. I remembered wondering what he was thinking. He was tall and lanky and had sunbleached hair that flopped in his dark blue eyes (think sapphires or the colour of the sky between dusk and true dark). I immediately thought that he was too cute for me but yet something compelled me to approach him and ask him what he was thinking. What followed was one of those conversations that did not seem all that extraordinary to the college student used to discussing magic and bullshit and philosophy but it seemed different somehow. Perhaps, because we were strangers but strangers who knew each other in a way that most people never know each other. At some point, we moved to a relatively quieter area on the edge of the dance floor to finish our conversation--literature, music, fate, destiny, life, dreams, grand passion.
We must have talked for hours and as the night wound to an end, the DJ began playing the last, slow dance songs. Jesse kissed me. I kissed him back. We kissed and kissed and kissed through the last two songs. He walked me back to my hotel. Stopping every so often to kiss and kiss and kiss again. We spent the next night together, dancing, drinking, and walking around the city. All along intending that it was just to be one night, a magical passionate night that according to me, could necessarily only exist on a separate plane from real life. He left in the morning, a cloudy, rainy morning and I cried.
I went back "home"--knowing that I was not ready to get married, that there was too much left that I needed to do. When my fiancée returned from vacation with his parents, I immediately broke off our engagement and our relationship. Really, how do you turn back from planning a wedding, a life together forever, and go back to simply being boyfriend and girlfriend? You cannot. But we ended up being good friends and he met the woman that he was supposed to be with and has a beautiful, spirited daughter. He is also my personal lawyer.
Jesse was headed west to pursue his career. Soon, thousands of miles would separate us as opposed to the much more manageable, 4 hour drive. Email was not prevalent at this time (yes the dark ages), and we wrote letters to each, became pen pals. Sometimes, we talked on the phone. And then a month later, I met my ex and thought it was fate because we came from such different backgrounds. Jesse was about a year and a half younger than me and my ex was 9 years older than me. Jesse and I continued to exchange letters (words on paper with ink) sent through the mail (yes with an envelope and a stamp) but not by the pony express. I went to his city late that fall with my ex and another couple. Jesse and I met for coffee, and we kissed goodbye.
Jesse headed west ahead of schedule, and we continued to write. I moved in with my ex that winter, and we continued to write. His letters, at least some of them, have survived two moves and are in a special box in my basement. Jesse sent me memorabilia from his career, a photo Christmas card before they became ubiquitous. Earlier that year, my relationship with my ex took a very bad turn, and I am not sure if I wrote to Jesse about it. I don't know. And I don't know why we stopped writing. I still don't know why. Life, I suppose, the day-to-day mundaneness of life intruded, I am sure. He was busy with his career; I was busy graduating from college and trying to build a life with my ex.
Throughout the years, I thought about Jesse, about getting in touch with him. In time, with the advent of Google, I located him and learned that he was accomplishing his dream and that he had married. And I felt uncomfortable about contacting him, worried about disrupting his life. So, I did nothing. Several years later I learned about the social networking phenomenon known as Facebook. I was reluctant, thought that I was too old, that it was another example of technology keeping us apart. On a lark, I registered for a facebook account while working one weekend. But I did not get the concept, and the account lay unused for several months.
I had spent the past few years in the haze of impending motherhood and then in the all-encompassing haze of new motherhood. Every love song was about her, and I was nursing and for the first time in my life, I was not interested in sex. And for a time, I thought that our daughter could save a marriage that had been sinking before it had begun. That she more than compensated for the lack of physical and emotional intimacy between me and her father. If we both loved her so much, couldn't that love that came from our combined genetic profiles save our relationship?
When my sunshine was nearly two years old and my hormones returned to "normal", I felt the all-encompassing veil of motherhood begin to lift and saw that I, the separate person, also existed. My sexuality returned in force, and I began to feel restless and trapped. Shortly after my sunshine turned two, I began to facebook in earnest, adding new friends, finding new friends like a tree of life from each new friend added. It was wild and disconcerting to have so many different facets of my life together in one place--friends from high school, from college, from post college, from work. People who knew me in different ways and knew different parts of me. It was at this time that I thought to get in touch with Jesse. So, I sent him a friend request. And we became friends on facebook.
Almost 15 years from when we first met, been in contact. It was like discovering fire again, except more intense. We exchanged emails on facebook, seamlessly resuming a conversation that had been on pause for 13 years. Except now we were both older and wiser, knew more about ourselves and desires than we had when we were 20-somethings. We both had accomplished our dreams, those dreams that we discussed and had begun to work on back then. We were both married, and we both wanted to remain married. I had a young daughter, and he and his wife were contemplating having a baby. Yet, despite having accomplished our dreams, our goals, there was something missing from the day-to-day of our otherwise, semi-charmed lives.
It is amazing how differently things appear to those outside of a relationship. To my friends and family, my ex and I had a "perfect" relationship but only the two people in a relationship can really know it, know its blemishes, and maybe not even both people.
Jesse and I established ground rules. We would resume our conversation but without trying to change our day-to-day lives. For a time, we did that and it was glorious. It was like waking from a deep sleep and suddenly discovering the world around you in all of its technicolour glory. Still separated by thousands of miles of geography and three time zones, we had found each other again, a sounding board, a listening post, an escape from having to be the people that we were in our ordinary lives. Business took me into his time zone and we met for a drink. And it was incredible and then awkward.
As it always did, life intruded. I decided that I had to leave my marriage. My ex characterized my behaviour as wanting to run away and join the circus. Despite his stated desire to stay married, he refused to go counseling, insisting it was all my fault. Because fault must be apportioned, right? The dynamic between Jesse and I changed. How could it now when the rules changed, when I wanted more? When he was content to stay with his day-to-day life? Though still "friends" on facebook, we lost each other for a time. Again. And then re-connected briefly and I learned that he and his wife were expecting a baby. We met again for a few stolen hours. And then we did not know each other again, except on the margins.
Then, I met the Duck. And somehow, Jesse and I found our way back to each other again. I got in deep with the Duck, perhaps more deeply and quickly than the circumstances dictated. Jesse was happy for me, wanted me to be happy, to have someone who treated me sweetly like the Duck did. Jesse and I were always friends, I think. Before we met. In the beginning and in the middle. In the here and now. The parameters of our friendship are something that we continue to navigate but I am content to know him, to be mutual sounding boards, listening posts, cheerleaders. Jesse is also a cinema fan and recently expressed surprise that I had not seen "Wings of Desire" yet, noting that it was "right up my alley."
The next day, otherwise known as last Saturday, I wrote to Jesse about "Wings of Desire." I was familiar with the plot of the movie, and I began thinking about guardian angels. I began to wonder if Jesse was my guardian angel. I met him out of nowhere in the middle of the week in my 20s. At a time that I knew on some level that I was not ready to get married. And I did not get married and ended up meeting my ex. Did my subconscious seek Jesse out? Then, in my 30s when perhaps I was beginning to accept on some level that my marriage was over, I deliberately sought Jesse out. And he was there. And then the Duck, and in a way, Jesse sought me out and I sought him out.
Later that day, I saw "Wings of Desire." Jesse was right; it was right up my alley. (Plot points will be revealed here so if you have never seen this movie, stop reading and go watch it first.) It was moody and atmospheric, cinematically beautiful and surreal in its gritty depiction of realism in 1980s Berlin, largely shot in black and white. But in soft focus with this lovely light shining through at various times. We follow our main character, Damiel, a guardian angel dressed in a dark suit and scarf, as he makes his rounds through humanity, listening to thoughts, sitting besides those in distress, lending a helping hand or touch to help his charges, helping them find their way, the courage to keep going. Damiel meets up with another angel and they compare notes from their daily rounds. Damiel muses on what it would be like to be human, to feel and touch and hear and taste.
As Damiel makes his rounds, he encounters Marion, who is a trapeze artist. Damiel is drawn to her, her thoughts, her pain, her beauty, her thoughts on the nature of being, existing. Throughout the movie, we see other angels, who are dressed like Damiel tending to their flock. It is a discussion about fate and being and loving and despair and humanity, the questions and desires and fears and the troubles that plague us. Marion's monologue toward the end of the movie gives voice to this debate--fate and coincidence and free will.
I was dazed and shaken by the questions posed and answered and left unanswered by the film. Haunted by the idea that we can really find our home, our true north and longing to find it for myself, wondering if I ever will. It was raining and overcast, dark clouds yet that luminous soft light as I got in my car after the film, feeling like much like one of those humans tended to by Damiel and his friends. I wrote to Jesse about the film again, pondering whether or not he was my guardian angel. Jesse answered in between the emails without answering the ultimate question but acknowledging that he had certainly been there at pivotal times in my life.
I know that Jesse is real, made of flesh and blood. I have touched his skin and felt the pulse and rush of his blood. (Plus, he usually wears jeans and button down shirts instead of a white robe and halo, carries a backpack and not a harp). So, even if Jesse is not an-according-to-Hoyle-guardian angel, did the universe send me to him, me to him, all those years ago? Was it a coincidence? Was it the culmination of lots of decisions, conscious or unconscious on my part, on his part? Are we fated to meet the people who touch are lives, in little ways, in daily ways, in major ways? Does God send us these people, our own guardian angels in human form? Does the universe lead us in inexorable ways to these people that are beyond our comprehension? Or is it because we have decided, be it consciously or unconsciously, to seek these people out?
Who knows? Are there really any conclusive, definitive answers to these larger questions? All we can do is live the lives that we are given, enjoying the moments of beauty, pushing through the hard times, and pondering the questions. Perhaps, receiving bits of the puzzle, moments of clarity, epiphanies in the shower. And when all else fails, a glass of cheap wine and insight from a 1980s movie starring members of the Brat Pack****:
"Jules, y'know, honey... this isn't real. You know what it is? It's St. Elmo's Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them... there was no fire. There wasn't even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you're making up all of this. We're all going through this. It's our time at the edge."
And, of course, Marion's monologue from Wings of Desire, which [co]incidentally is also a movie from the 1980s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lXeTSW0lW4&feature=share
*A small, rectangular plastic item that contains music that could be played on a machine that hit the long black pieces inside of it.
**I did not think about this incident too much or how much worse it might have been had I not been wearing my seat belt, if I had not been in a newer car with airbags. It was in the weeks before the bar exam and my wedding. I mostly found it notable because of the irony of getting in a car accident on the way to a class about our mandatory auto insurance law and its role in accidents and because it marked my first and only time riding in the rear of a patrol car (the responding officers gave me a lift to the police station as my car was undrivable. For the record, I highly avoid traveling this way. The back seat was all hard plastic and very uncomfortable). Later, it became important when I realized that my marriage was over and that I got married even knowing what I knew. When I called my betrothed to tell him that I had been in a serious car accident, my voice trembling, his first question was to ask me why I was in that neighborhood, not to ask if I was okay. Shouldn't his immediate reaction have been, oh my God, are you okay? For the record, I was not in a dodgy area of town. We were wed in Las Vegas by Elvis in a Blue Hawaiian-themed wedding, and he and our guests wore Hawaiian-themed attire. I was returning the first shirt I had purchased for him to wear at our nuptials.
***Information was the colloquial term that we used to describe directory assistance, which was basically 411 on a landline.
****The Brat Pack was a riff on the Rat Pack***** and was used to describe a group of stars who appeared in a number of 1980s movies. St. Elmo's Fire was like the Superbowl of Brat Pack movies and starred Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez (the saner of Martin Sheen's two children), Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, and Mare Winningham. Other famous Brat Pack stars included Molly Ringwald, James Spader, Ralph Macchio, C.Thomas Howell, and Matt Dillion (yes Entourage's Johnny Chase's older brother in real life).
*****The Rat Pack referred to a group of male stars in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s that originally centered on Humphrey Bogart (swoon) and after his death included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. These gentlemen performed in Las Vegas together and on film, including the original Oceans' Eleven.
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