"So what did you talk about with the hitch-hiker?" (see post below)
Oddly enough, we talked about choices we've made in life. It turns out that the hitch-hiker I picked up was an ex-professional guitar player who chose to hang up his guitar when his daughter was born. Life on the road did not coincide with his vision of being a father. He wanted to be there every night to eat dinner with and tuck his daughter into bed. Mr. Hitch-Hiker still played the guitar on week-ends with friends, but to earn a steady income to support his family, he now sold and installed electric garage doors and gates.
He talked about how this was not his passion and in no way a passionate job, but how he was happy in the life he was leading. He'd taken up week-end parasailing as well, which is why I found him on the side of a road looking for a way back to his car. Mr. Hitch-Hiker had found new passions in his life, with his daughter seeming to hold the top spot. I talked about the choices I had made, too, like marrying a french man and moving to France. It turns out that the hitch-hiker wasn't french, but from Belgium and he too had married someone from Marseille. We talked about how we can let go of some career expectations, sans regrets, and how life presents new opportunities along the way.
Mr. Hitch-Hiker might not have mentioned his guitar, but when he tried to put his parasail in the trunk of my car, he found it quite full with my trombone, not a small object either. For all he knew, I may have had a body in that big black bag in my trunk....So there we were, two strangers with big, ominous looking bags in our possession, travelling a few kilometers of life's road together.
Now I am safely back home, not likely to pick up any more strangers in the near future, and into my weekday routine, shared with a sick coughing girl...too sick to go to school. Thank goodness she likes to read. We are planning on being co-couch potatos all afternoon, her with a book on dolphins and me with the third book in the Diana Gabaldon series..."Voyager". So far, this is my favorite of the series, I can't seem to put it down, so, see you later....
Monday, September 24, 2007
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10 comments:
I wonder if your paths will cross again . . .
You play the trombone---I wish my daughter could meet you. She sometimes think she is the only girl who plays the trombone.
Hope she sticks with it for awhile.....but it's a struggle......specially now that she has a cast on her leg.
It was nice of you to pick him up, and thank goodness he was a nice man! My dad picks up hitchikers ALL THE TIME and some of them are SCARY!
great series. i just finished the last one and while anxiously awaiting the next, i decided to start the series over. that is something i never do so you know that i love them.
did your hitchhiker look like Jamie? ;)
I know a guy who installs electric garage doors and gates! He works with his dad, brother and nephew, and never ever considered doing anything else. But like your hitch-hiker, he's got a busy weekend life.
The Outlander series (or is it called Cross Stitch there?) is my all-time, #1 favorite series of books! I have never read any others that have such a great mix of romance, history and great storyline to boot.
Happy reading!!
What a great story! Isn't it funny how our lives take the most interesting twists and turns and yet seem so mundane? Thanks for sharing!
Now Gabaldon is writing about Lord John, who happens to be gay, and the bawdy houses of old England. Jamie does appear from time to time.
Excellent post. We once picked up a man who had run out of gas on the freeway. After dropping him off I made some comment about how it was nice he hadn't killed us to which my husband laughed and said - did you forget about the 4 guns in their cases that you were sitting next to when you moved to the back seat - he must have felt pretty confident when he got in our car that we weren't going to kill him. LOL (My husband and his brothers enjoy target shooting)
This was such a great story! It sounds like it was a really lovely, unexpected encounter... Plus, you gave him a helping hand! When these kinds of things happen in my life, I can't help but think they were for a reason, that somehow the exchange reaffirms some life choices you've made yourself or just allowed you to reflect on things in a new light after talking about them with this stranger. Sometimes that happens to me when I'm taking the plane back home to the U.S. -- that is, if I'm in the mood to talk and the person next to me is in the mood as well!
Hope your daughter feels better soon -- and it is great that you both love to read!
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