The Unfurling

On Monday night we sat together for the first time as people, not just writers. Wine, soup, sweets. We are more than writers and that hit home around my table. I realized the surgeon also paints. The weaver is a Harvard MBA. We're sea captains AND ballerinas.

We've been together some months now and I find myself shyly sentimental about the unfurling intimacy among us. I like water as an image, so sometimes I close my eyes and listen to what breaks our surface--my first husband died, I was wearing corduroy, he was in Mayo after his accident, Dan and I used to watch The Simpsons, my ex-wife who's not my ex.

Yet how polite we are. The whale arises from a calm sea and shoots forth a geyser of truth and none of us stirs. No running for the harpoons and hoisting the mainsail to give chase. (I really should have finished Moby Dick to blog this properly.)

We're strangers really, sailing off on our own adventures, sharing the wide seas and every two weeks greeting each other with a volley of cannon fire, as if to say, "isn't this a jolly good life?!"

More revelations will slip sideways from us. And I am so grateful to a witness to it, to be in your company for those brief hours. ~ Victoria Tirrel