How to Connect Lots of Dots and Spots - A Party Starter

Three years after moving to Chicago from Lansing, Michigan, I threw a party that changed my life. Thirty people on the guest list… a couple neighbors, colleagues from work, a guy I dated, dear friends from back in Lansing, people from my second term on the community service committee at St. Clements church, another from the Edgewater Community Council where I lived and a couple friends of friends. I planned to make good on all the times I said, “I know someone you should meet.”

Guests came alone and some brought a plus one.  I called earlier in the week to get accurate RSVPs. After they climbed the three floors, they arrived to find a string dartboard hanging on my door. I used a piece of cardboard and stuck pins around the edges of a circle evenly spaced, each labeled with a guest’s name. Three pieces of yarn, green, yellow and blue strung from each person’s pin connected them to three other’s pins. In the end, all pins had three threads.  

INSTRUCTIONS 

1.         Wear a name tag.  (Hung in the envelope below.)

2.         Once inside, meet the people whose strings connected to yours. 

3.         Determine why I thought you should meet your connections.

A prize will be awarded to the first three persons to figure out their three connections.

My reasons for connecting people were genuine – like Allen, who worked at a private university and did his Ph.D. on the 12^th century concept of sin, with Alan who worked at a public university and did his Ph.D. on 12^th century healthcare.  I connected two people starting businesses. I strung others together for less compelling connections too - two poets, two women named Ann, guys with beards, people who jogged, and a woman who chaired a church community committee and a man who chaired a committee from an organization in the same community. I wrote down my reasons for connecting my guests, leaving blanks if I didn’t have something specific. Many of my guests had a leg up on the game when they introduced themselves. I overheard more than once that evening, “Oh, you’re the one Mary said who…”

By the third guest knocking on the door, one of my prize-driven, early-bird guests answered it before I did, looked at the nametag and said, “You are someone I need to talk to.” In amazement I watched as each new person arrived to a welcome untypical to most gatherings of strangers.

More astounding to me were the reasons my guests found for my introductions. Out of ninety possible connections, I listed about forty including the lame connections of beards and similar names. My guests identified three times that number. In fact, the beards never got that match – much too mundane. Instead they puzzled out their fathers were from the same town in Pennsylvania (I’m a genealogist, who knew?) The Anns were married on the same day. One pair found they worked at the same place at different times. One pair identified same birthdays. Reasons they identified included growing up in the same size family, similar birth order, both loved the same television shows, sports teams, politicians, songs, movies, books, ethnic food, neighborhoods, countries, candy, cars or color – clearly, my guests thoroughly quizzed each other and found loads of connections I didn’t. I now wish I heard how they uncovered these disparate facts.

The process of connecting started or ended for some connections. Once the Als made the discovery that they studied the same century, they came to me to validate the pairing and went on to find their next matches, never to talk again. The two entrepreneurs started dating after that party, (I’m a Yenta – who knew?)  And, I discovered that lives intersect far more that we realize.

My life changed the moment I heard one guest say to another, “You are someone I need to talk to.” In that moment, a sense of purpose coursed through me. I made a connection. By the end of the party I learned my instincts were accurate, but I couldn’t predict or invest in an outcome. 

With nearly the same name, identical black beards, experts in the same century, no one could interrupt the two academicians, right? Ha! Their true commonality turned out to be a need to be the first to win the game.  The Als said nothing else to each other the remainder of the evening. I admit my disappointment in the lack of ignition in that connection. But, the party affirmed an interest and a talent to intentionally make connections. Dot to dot and lots of spots.  

Nude Women - Typical Saturday - This is Who I Am

Sitting on a folding chair in an Ellen Tracy store is not my typical Saturday activity. The day began in its usual way… stretching, espresso, an 8:30am call from Lanni. I didn’t take the call, however, because my head was covered in 6G-warm brown hair colorant. Rinsed and dressed I returned the call awhile later, because it wouldn’t be Saturday without talking to her, and then headed out for errands like the post office and cleaners in time for brunch with a dear friend. So far, that’s a typical Saturday.

A week earlier, Julia suggested going to a program after brunch entitled, This is Who I Am, a presentation by a fine art and commercial photographer from Seattle, Roseanne Olson. So, we met at a restaurant down the street from the program and her daughter and her friend, both a year ahead of Alex in high school, joined us for the meal and the program. What a treat to have the opportunity to be brought current, first hand on the life of children who have been at the heart of many, many Saturday brunch conversations over the last twenty years.

One of the young women got married a year ago, graduated from nursing school in December and just got back from a surgical mission in Kenya. The other recently moved to Michigan for a job to be near her fiance, whom, on the day she met him, declared she’d marry him. There was complete agreement the table that the betrothal was quite unexpected as she wasn’t the marrying kind. Can you hear all the great stories in these conversations? I loved hearing them, like reading a book with a satisfying ending.

Before we went on, I split off from Julia and the girls to put money in the parking meter. The five minute hike gave me time to ponder the discussions. Like a good book, it drove me inside to think about my own interests at twenty-seven, my career, my friends, my travels, my relationships. Walking, aware enough to consciously miss the sheets of ice, my thoughts were mainly directed at the decisions - the dots from which I leapt like a frog on lily pads to land where I am now. 

Staring out the window from the Ellen Tracy Store, I couldn’t help allowing a pang of regret wash over me. Maybe I should have jumped a bit sooner or stayed put for longer. Each stop gave me new insights and made me who I am at this point.

Roseanne projected a PowerPoint  onto a screen  cleverly made of foam board clamped to a tripod. It consisted of sepia-tone photos of women from age 20 to late 90s dressed, at most, in a piece of tulle. The photos depicted small and large women, a women with one breast, another with a scar from a double lung transplant, another who would give birth eleven days later. Subjects had long hair, short hair, dark, light and white hair. I found myself intrigued, relating, wincing and wanting to be a person who could say, this is who I am, and, wanting others to recognize me as that is who you are.

The store, as you might imagine, isn’t set up for performances. Chairs were in rows inches apart with no room to bend forward to put a purse down without knocking your forehead on the seat in front. The Ellen Tracy staff created an elegant atmosphere by serving wine and cupcakes, but there was no easy way to hold a glass, a plate, eat and use a napkin. Having arrived minutes from a meal and wanting neither,  I offered to hold the cupcake plate for the woman behind me. She no-thanked me, but I offered again when I heard the commotion from her cupcake tipping and her reaction nearly spilling the wine.

Looking over my right shoulder, she was so near, I could smell the wine and chocolate on her breath.  She looked fiercely into my eyes. I know I can be pushy and thought for sure I crossed some line. She leaned forward and I pulled back. She put her hand on my chair and said, “Are you Mary?”

   “Yes.” Having no idea, not even a sense of familiarity for her.

   “You used to have a dog.”

   “Yes. Oscar.” This was not a useful clue.

   “We were in a group together.”

   ???, I thought.

   “Yeah, you were with Dan. You’re a writer. You wore long skirts, boots, great earrings. You sometimes walked to group. I was so sorry, when you announced you were leaving.”

Finally, chunk, kerchunck, kerchunk, it clicked into place.

She remembered me, me… from 1995. She remembered what I wore, my boyfriend, my dog, my clothes and my mode of transportation.  I could barely picture where the meetings were held. The leader of that group turned out to be the first cousin of the Roseanne Olson and stood six feet away from us. She was the dot connector between the woman balancing her cupcake and me.

As I returned to my car, I replayed my earlier thoughts about the dots that began when I was twenty-seven. It occurred to me that there was no straight line of dots to now. Yesterday,  I received a robust reminder of dots that took place eighteen years ago… sixteen years after I was the age of the girls with the newlywed faces. And today, grateful for that reminder, I will admit. This is who I am, on a typical Saturday.

Paul McCartney and the Cut Glass Tumbler of Trust

A few minutes ago, after I said to myself, "What the hell, there's only an inch of wine in that bottle", I discovered Paul McCartney singing songs of the generation that came before annoying. For me, he remains the voice of the baby boomers, not the bobby soxers. He was one over-thirty person that I thought I could trust.

  

This profound thought came to me as I washed dishes from a lunch I fixed for my son, but eventually consumed by my neighbor. The threat of a terrifying ice storm curtailed our mother-son bonding, and Nancy, walking her dog, became an easy invitation for helping me reduce the amount of chicken soup. You see, I don’t like leftovers. I find them tired and old and not a better dish after the flavors all meld together. I like fresh.

And yet, I dare to tell an old story. I will begin with a fresh-made lesson from today. Don’t place travel coffee mug tops, the rubber malleable ones that bend and slide on like condoms, in the silverware bin in the dish drainer. Very sharp, pointy knives may poke through them and create a joke coffee mug. Which by the way, in the morning is not funny.

I envisioned the horrors of a sweater or fresh shirt perfectly matched for the day, soiled by dribbles of coffee. I know this to be a real threat. My connect-the-dot brain vividly remembers a visit to Uncle Harry and Aunt Laura, who were sibling to my grandmother. As I write this, I side-step in memory to my father’s funeral and reading my Uncle Harry’s name, affixed in brass, as the benefactor of the oak throne used for the priest’s respite during his duties saying  Mass. Clearly, Uncle H. had money, pull and always, the highest esteem of my father.

Which brings me to Aunt Laura, who thought it hilarious to give an eight year old a cut glass tumbler etched with branches, each with many many minute leaves. I remember Aunt Laura chuckling as I examined the glass and liquid dribbled down my arm, then hooting uncontrollably, in a Julia Child-like laugh, when ginger ale splashed from the holes in the middle of some leaves and spotted my turquoise dress.

I remember the dress. I remember the chair, the end tables, the lamp, the drapes and her curly “done” hair back lit, a halo from the windows behind where she sat. I remember sitting between my parents, my father in a flowered chair my mother and me on a settee. I remember that my mother smiled looking first at Aunt Laura then turning her back to her and  snarling, her lips pursing as she frantically wiped my chest with her cocktail napkin before the soda spattered the Aunt’s floor.

ITunes moved beyond McCartney to Rodriguez and the dishes are dry like the bottle. When I put the them away, I will test the travel mug lid. It just isn’t worth trusting what once was safe. 

+++++

p.s., If you hit the McCartney link, you'll hear his new-old music. When I hear it mixed with more modern, it get diluted and more palatable. I still LOVE the Beatles. 

Synchronicity - Connecting the Dots at the Farmers Market

Last summer, I shared volunteer duties with Matt a first-time volunteer in the Welcome Tent at the Morton Grove Farmers Market. It took about two minutes to orient him to the papers on the table, the crowd counter, the weekly drawing (don’t say raffle because no money or gambling is involved), the cherry red, covered Radio Flyer wagons available as long as a parent leaves a driver’s license, and the hidden spotted cow… ring the bell when a child finds it, give them a section of stickers and tell them to go hide it for some other child. Matt, a government worker was a quick study.

A few people came by and interacted on each of those responsibilities…  most wanted to win the drawing for the bag of samples from the market. One woman whose hair was “done” and the color of pale carrot juice approached the table and pointed with an gnarled finger at a brochure with a picture of the “eight wonders of the world”… the wonders of Morton Grove that is. It got her talking. “You know that corner of Nashville and Beckwith with the tree with the limb that the Indians used to point the way to their grounds? It was hit by lightning.”

I told her, I stopped on a bike ride a few weeks before and took a photo of it after I read the plaque that memorialized it. She told us that she first saw it when she moved from Rhinelander, Wisconsin to Morton Grove sixty-two years fresh from nursing school. In the years since, she held the position of the Morton Grove Health Department nurse, a position, she told us, no longer exists. Something clicked… dots began to connect as we conversed.  I asked, “By any chance would does the name Courts from Eagle River/ mean anything to you?”

“Why, yes,“ she said. “She was a nurse… Lou Courts…. older than me”  

“That’s her,” I told her. “After she retired, she’d visit my next door neighbor in Michigan, her niece, in the winters when Rhinelander had seven feet of snow and she couldn’t easily get out.”

After a little more chit chat, the woman with the carrot juice hair went off to shop. Just as she turned to move on to the fruit farmer, she turned and told us she was now ninety-two. Matt and I looked at each other… disbelieving. Ninety two. Both of us thought seventyfive maybe – not nineties. But considering Aunt Lou’s age, it had to be true. I loved the connected dots. And, I want to be that 92.