Sharp Pencils

About a year and a half ago, I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant in late afternoon sharing a bowl of Chicken Chow Mein with Mr. Minor Navigational Change himself.

If there is such a thing as a kindred spirit, he is mine. He is also balding, has one crooked tooth and I really hope he doesn’t know that I blog.

We hadn’t seen each other in over a year, though we’d spoken on the phone a few times. Still, it was as if we’d stepped back in time, comfortable in a relationship that was as worn as a favorite pair of Levis.

He’d seen me through the shooting. Through the PTSD that followed. Through the realization my marriage had died, but my husband and I were still entombed within it. Through a loss and regaining of faith. We’d shared some funny moments. Sad moments. Fear. Through it all, our friendship became its own drama and we were now just bit players.

So, there we were, talking about the latest and the greatest events in our lives – his health, my divorce. He asked me what the split was doing in my life, how was it affecting me. I just shrugged.

I’m finding out things about myself that I didn’t know, I told him. I didn’t realize how many concessions you make within a marriage. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s just when it’s over, you have to sort through your possessions, but also your life, figuring out yours mine and ours.

Explain.

Okay, I say and I try to find a way to quantify it for him. I like to go barefoot.       

It takes a divorce to figure that out?

I like … I like sharp pencils.

He laughed, head thrown back, crooked tooth twinkling. Sharp pencils, huh? As opposed to nubby pieces of pencils or just other writing utensils in general?

I plucked a piece of chicken off his side of the bowl, my chopsticks faster than his.

So tell me about this blood clot, I say, changing the subject.

Yesterday, eighteen months after the Lo Mein, I felt an urge to contact him and reached for my phone. The display said I had one text message barely two minutes old. I knew who it was before I ever opened it.

You remember saying you like sharp pencils, it said.

I felt a tug in my heart. I know the road he’s on, though his reevaluation is vocational, not marital. I know it’s scary and dark and feels like it will never end. But I also know he’ll make it through to the other side. Finally, in a life that has become so unrecognizable, I find a familiar thing: a compassion. And I’m strangely relieved. I can do this. I can help. Because I’ve been through this chaff-burning process before and even though I hate it and it hurts and thinking of it brings back horrible memories, I will go there, just as others went there with me.

That’s what friends are for.

And I’m beginning to realize, that’s what pain is for. It is our friend, not our enemy. Like a good trainer, it pushes us to places we don’t want to go, so that when we need to lead others through, we can do so. Sometimes, it is God’s way of saying no.

And sometimes, it is his way of saying, no…for now.