The Point At Which Two Circles Intersect

My world is quieter than it used to be, the circle around me smaller.

But even when I was healthier, I never thought of myself as a very social person. Yes, busyness swirled about me, like at my job where for eight years I sat in my little fishbowl while 125 people bustled by with papers or machine parts, but not more than a handful of those people needed my services. And not more than a few handfuls were a regular part of my life.

This week I saw an example of just how deeply my roots go into this piece of the planet and the diversity and circularity of the people who have weaved themselves into my path.

I went to physical therapy on Tuesday, and while I was doing my stretches another patient came in and got on the treadmill. He was about forty, a burly, rough-looking guy – stubble, tattoos, black t-shirt, black sweats, black sneakers. The iPod he was attached to leaked Guns-n-Roses. He’d been in several times before, and from his conversations with my PT, I overheard (I am an excellent eavesdropper) that he was a prison guard, did something to his shoulder, and was on disability until he could become fit and whole enough to take on 300-pound prisoners. And, play a little golf.

Because I’d been seeing less and less of my PT (which is a good thing), and because his patients come and go a little faster than I had, I hadn’t been seeing as much of the “regulars” as I used to. Or, let’s say, the regulars changed. But this guy, I remembered. Each time he came in I thought about one of my husband’s friends, who is also a prison guard. When we were much, much younger, the bunch of us used to go out for beers every weekend and find some way to coagulate on all the major holidays that involve drinking. But as each single man gained a spouse, had some kids, moved away, all those life events that cause “that old gang of mine” to disintegrate, we saw each other less and less. Maybe for weddings. Or christenings. Or our parents’ funerals. And then it was “remember when…” and then we would wind up on someone’s porch, of their own house, drinking cocktails and eventually devolving into our twenty-something selves until some of us remembered we were grownups with mortgages and babysitters waiting at home.

And I was thinking of this friend now. When I got up from the table to do some other exercises, and he was grunting out a few bicep curls, I caught him between sets.

“So where do you work?” I asked.

He told me the name of the prison. Which is the same one where our friend worked.

“Do you know Rob Scott?” I said.

He broke into a wide grin. “Rob Scott? Are you kidding? He’s my best friend!” And then he looked at me, a little puzzled. Probably wondering how this little mousy-looking thing with glasses and curls would ever meet a tattooed prison guard. “How do you know him?” he asked.

And I told him the story of the beers and the New Years’ Eve parties. And how I was there when he was putting baby oil on his first tattoo. And how my job at every get-together was to make at least one off-color remark rude enough to make him blow beer out his nose.

The guy looked at me with a little more respect. “I think I remember you,” he said. “Were you at the wedding?”

I told him yes. He was talking about Rob’s wedding, where he’d wed a fellow prison guard, a single mother with a five year old girl, and in a move that had all of the women crying, got on one knee at the altar and slipped a tiny ring on this little girl’s hand.

I also remembered that the marriage had ended disastrously and he filled me on the dismal details. I caught him up on the whereabouts of the other members of our band.

Then the PT flew by and caught the two of us chatting. He stopped. And stared. “How do you know this guy?” he asked me.

“Mutual friends,” I said.

That was one circle.

Yesterday, on my pain doctor’s recommendation, I met with a woman in Woodstock who teaches Qigong, for a private session to learn more about it and for her to learn more about me. If you’re not familiar with Qigong (pronounced chi goong), it’s a Chinese energy-movement exercise that is supposed to realign and relax the body and improve and prevent many health problems. Including chronic pain and stiffness. And fibro. I’d gotten a recommendation to see her before, but I resisted. I’d felt overwhelmed at the time, too many other new things to learn and new medications to absorb. There was also another reason I resisted.

I knew her. She’d been very good friends with one of my ex-bosses, a woman who went on to become a rabbi and now lives in Seattle. Do you have people in your lives that even without a single effort of your own, you wind up bumping into over and over? This couple, the rabbi and her husband, are two people that Husband and I are destined to cross paths with over and over. Even after I left the job (actually the job left me…their home-based business had evolved into other, singular pursuits and they no longer could pay for a office manager/personal assistant.), I saw them. My new boss met a man who was in the rabbi’s husband’s men’s group. When my boss threw her new beau a birthday party, we were invited, and the rabbi and her husband were there. When they got married, we were invited, and the rabbi performed the service. When they had a baby boy, and had a bris, we were invited, and the rabbi performed the service. And even though they moved to Seattle, Husband swears we will see them again.

Anyhow. Theirs was a world that…well, I had mixed feelings about. They were part of that Woodstocky-New Age-Nouveau Jew thing (and everyone used to live in Manhattan, but acted like they were the ones who “discovered” Woodstock) that I was fascinated with but didn’t quite respect. I mocked them with great glee in one of my novels. While previously I’d enjoyed going to Woodstock for an afternoon, after that job I didn’t quite enjoy it as much. I knew that the marionettes had strings, I knew all the tricks, I knew that it was all a show. The barefoot hippies on the green had trust funds, for Chrissakes. The Volvos with environmental stickers on the back spewed many cubic yards of greenhouse gases out their failing exhaust systems.

So I was afraid that going to Cassia would bring all that cynicism out in me again. That even though this was a discipline that even mainstream physicians recommended for me, that I wouldn’t take it seriously because…well…because…one of THOSE people was teaching it.

But the moment I met her all of that fell away. She seemed so relaxed and so genuine – even though the trappings of Woodstock were all around her – the clothes, the house, the books – that I just went with it and put my past impressions behind me. It was a good session and afterward we talked about the rabbi and her husband and I’m going to start Qigong classes tomorrow and see where it takes me.

And, ironically, Cassia told me, one of the tenets of Qigong is that energy moves in circles.

Like all of us.