Meeting Mosaic Woman

 What mattered was the book inside the red pannier

It was 1986 and I may have been lacking direction. I had just earned my BS in Biology and chose to ride my bicycle to the Catskills. Info on 20-30 graduate programs were being examined. I was at home with my parents. I began to tutor at a community college where i had turned my life around a few years earlier. It was in a room attached to the library.

If memory serves me correct, I saw her first in the library, but I knew I would later see her in the tutoring center. I was tutoring science. Mosaic Woman was tutoring philosophy. I remember telling a friend I had seen someone special before I could say I had spoken to her.

In college many a friend had recommended that I Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, so I read it while I camped in the Catskills. There was something in that book that reminded me of something she was tutoring, so one day I asked her if she had read it. Were we at the cafeteria?

How long was that initial conversation? Long enough, for many more would happen.

and here we are... 

at a Christopher Ries exhibit, looking reflective and blue

at a Great Lake, looking jazz festival hip

at the Oregon shore a few years after we met, looking slightly less gray