Lost And Found

I drove to meet a new friend at the Ithaca Beer Company tap room yesterday.
  It’s actually a restaurant with a patio.  Since I was afraid I might be late, I wound up getting there early, before the restaurant opened at 12.  Luckily, I  spotted an employee on the patio and convinced him to let me in .It was so nice and sunny out that I decided to sit out there myself.

I’m so glad I did. As soon as I set foot on it, I felt as if the whole world had vanished except for the patio itself and the flowers and  bushes around it. Somehow the flowers-   bright reds, violet, purple and pink (don't ask me for names, I don't have a clue), were combined in such a way that although they attracted me, they were visually soothing. There was something about the shapes, and the rocks and how everything was combined.SuddenIy, I wasn’t thinking about anything else. Everything fell away.  I hadn’t felt this relaxed in a long time, not since I’d gone rowing with my son a long while back.  It felt a  bit like being on vacation about two or three days on—at least when I’m having a good one.  The rest of the world goes away and everything is just the way it should be, except in this case, instead of my going away and leaving everything behind, everything inside my head went away and left me behind. And there I was, totally relaxed. For a moment I wanted to kick off my grown-up lady shoes and run through the grass.  But that’s where the fantasy ended.   Perhaps reminded by the servers setting up and one woman picking flowers and calling out to an unseen colleague, I couldn’t pretend I was in a park or my own private garden. So, I confined myself to walking around a bit and then sat happily  at a table.

Then my new friend arrived and we had a great conversation, a kind of voyage of discovery into each other’s lives and work. There were differences and convergences and shared passions. And we were amused that she, who had a GPS and lived nearby, was the one who got lost, while I, from a different town and without one, had been early.   We ate and drank and the food and the drink were good.  Then lunch was over and we went our separate ways.  I went out of the restaurant down the narrow road  to the big one, around the sign facing the other way saying the road I'd been on was closed (long story) and turned and turned again because there was a one way street.  Do I need to tell you what happened next? I got lost.

  A  word of advice -  if you see a sign advertising peaches on the right side of a road and you remember seeing a sign advertising peaches on the left side when you were coming the other way, that doesn’t mean it’s the same sign for the same peaches on the same road.  Also, Seneca Falls has some attractive spots on its main street.  I wish I’d seen them because I was visiting Seneca Falls, not because I was trying to get to Syracuse from Ithaca by what seemed like the Polar Route (Northern). And all that calm and relaxation?  I bet I don’t have to tell you that either. But at least I have the memory.