I come from a long line of chin-sticker-outers. Folk who have a tendency towards paving over stuff (but not forgetting about it) or just calling it okay because we ought to be, above all, grateful people. And I am. If you've read anything I've ever written, you'll see the tire tracks of these ways of thinking all over my general outlook. Being a blogger, though, requires some honest, garden-variety vulnerability, something that I fully admit I'm really no good at. I like to be the strong one who says everything's fine. I like to default to gratitude. It's comfortable, it's hopeful. When I can't say anything else, I can always say, "well, I'm grateful."I spent yesterday's late afternoon hours with a friend I've known since somewhere in the neighborhood of third grade. We go way, way back and we've always had a special understanding of and liking for one another. It's seldom that we get to hang, but we made it happen. We sat on the porch of the Taproom, enjoyed a couple of artfully-wrapped Ashton cigars, some New Belgium Sunshine brew and then some actual sunshine, too. The air and the light were ideal, even our bar wench (and I use that term in the most positive sense possible) was perfect and used words like "banana" and "coriander" and "filtered water" when describing our beers. The conversation was stimulating, intense at times. Above all, I felt such kinship with this fellow, this outstanding personality I've had the pleasure of knowing since the mid-eighties, back when we were still in jelly shoes and striped knee socks.
We talked about life, love, change, loss, quitting, God, travel, revelation and revolution. In the interest of divulging as little as possible, that's where I'll stop talking about what we talked about. But when all was said and done and all that hard stuff had been tilled up, thought through and talked over, I felt hopeful, glad and plain grateful for that familiar, earnest face across the table.
