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All good
things come to be when it is time, neither a moment sooner nor a
second later. Sistah Shoop could feel life experiences come into
being. None immediately
ready to test out, but more like a fetus that requires some internal
growth before it were to be born. She had never had a birthing experience, but she thought that
this must be something akin to it on a metaphysical level.
She chucked
the empty tomato sauce can off into the trash sinking it straight in.
She felt her visual acuity had come into being not that awfully
long ago, in more ways than one.
Was it
possible that the sight of one’s soul was tied up somehow to the
sight from one’s eyes? Shoop
didn’t know for sure if the correlation held any deep meaning beyond
her own thoughts, but it made dog-gone good sense to her somehow.
Of course it could be more that she disliked wearing her
glasses and was just happy about getting the sauce can to the garbage
without having to clean anything up.
Mentally she awarded herself 3 points.
Sistah
Shoop’s first remembrance of this newly forming truth had come up
several weeks back when she had struck up a conversation in an airport
with a perfect stranger while they both waited on Delta flight 5240
departing for Atlanta, Georgia. The
woman had sat down next to her to wait for boarding to begin.
She was just a plain and simple looking woman who seemed happy
to be going somewhere.
Shoop found
her to be pleasant enough, but nothing else struck her as attractive
or inviting. They
exchanged topical information at first, destinations and length of
stay. From there the
conversation became more personal, more of a sharing, the listening
“became” more of a feeling, and as all this took place Sistah
Shoop looked into the woman’s eyes.
How often do we not look any further at a person?
She thought. As
she looked she noticed, or felt rather that she was looking at this
woman from her heart. What
had been plain and simple now looked wonderful.
We are so much more than our external presentation, Shoop
thought knowing that later on she would take her own narcissism to
task. She realized that
shallowness would not lead you to the deep end of anything.
It could be the only reason for her to have missed this
woman’s beauty before and for a moment she felt a sense of shame.
The sparkle of this woman’s brown eyes showed Sistah Shoop
that they didn’t have to be blue to be beautiful.
Sistah Shoop
patted the woman’s hand and smiled.
A simple gesture Shoop felt for an extraordinary stranger. Delta flight 5240 headed to Atlanta was now ready for
boarding.
For twenty
minutes in two lives nothing outside of where they were mattered. The only thing that had occurred was someone entering
someone’s life for a fleeting moment.
And it was impossible for that moment to merely be coincidence,
for in that small expanse of time Shoop was given the gift of vision.
How many years of her life had she seen beauty only where she
desired to see it? And in
all those years had she seen ugliness or even plainness where she had
been afraid to see beauty? Sistah
Shoop now understood that seeing from her heart presented a different
view that she wouldn’t have necessarily seen from her eyes.
The entire
exchange would never have happened if the woman had been one minute
later, as Shoop had been on her way to the restroom.
How different her life would be today, she thought, had this
woman not arrived right on time.
Sistah Shoop reached over and grabbed the wine bottle.
Wyndam Estate Vin 888, it was a cabernet merlot.
She pulled the cork out and looked around as if there were
someone to notice then drank straight out of the bottle.
It was a good South East Australian wine she thought.
She poured some into her pasta sauce that was cooking.
Dinner was going to be good tonight…
Shoop 2003_06
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