A Movie Just For Me

"It plays on my mind like an old dusty Hollywood classic, only better, more poignant, more deeply affecting. A cut reeled just for me. "

There was downpour that night. So sudden.

Luck found us a parking slot a few steps away from the place. We didn't have far to walk but struggled through the puddles. Both of us huddled under our old rickety umbrella while the feisty windy onslaught of water madly pelted our pants. It was relief to get inside.

The waiter led us to a small round wooden table.Too small and situated at an angle I found discomforting. No matter the inconvenience of a wait, we had to insist on being seated elsewhere. Dinner, after all, is meant to be enjoyed not endured. Thankfully, we did not have to endure for long.

The table was perfect this time - wide and comfortable and calmly lighted. We had a view of the rains, and of briskly walking people ducked under the shadow of umbrellas, and of the young patrons who sat smoking outside where the bistro's overhead awning kept them dry. How these young people can stand the smoke, and the cold, and the wet altogether shuddered my senses.

Being the pasta couple we are, a hushed serious discussion on what to order persisted for sometime. That agreed, we settled our choices. I declined the wine list. "Are you sure?" he asked, feigning mock surprise. "Why yes," I replied, though inwardly I was considering, "perhaps later."



"They serve Danesi here," I continued to rev small talk. My eyes subtly scanned the other seated guests; two ladies to my right, one of whom was talking not so quietly into her cellphone. Discretion is so passe' for some it seems. A nice Indian family to our left conversing in a mixture of English and our local dialect. Not tourists.

In a nearby table was a Japanese lady. Oddly, she was speaking in our local dialect as well, her oriental accent sweetly twanged, and her voice audible enough to gather snippets of her Manila life for the past five years. This she was rapturously relating to her attentive Filipina friend.

The other tables were occupied by a motley of interesting couples, each engrossed in their own private conversations.

And then - I saw them.....Yes, I saw them...

Their faces softly framed by the muted prisms of an overhead Tiffany lamp. Two of a kind but so the same. The woman to the right was much older, her tender heart shaped face and the almond curve of her smoky eyes reminiscent of a classic Renoir. The lady to the left was younger., a younger teenage version: Daughter.

Now, every once in a while I ask the ether to send me a gift. A magic moment to inspire me, to fill me, to envelope my hapless spirit with a phosphorescent hope that all is not a parcel of strife with the world.

That in spite of the hallow of distant wars, the morbid tastelessness of poverty, the perverse inhumanity of those who corrupt both in deeds and words, and the apathy of those who walk in the airs of wealth, there indeed is heaven in the gap; that space between people filled with all the best of things. A space where the sublimest of all the world's understanding can be found...real and not merely a manner of polite scholarly discourse.

My eyes were transfixed. There was something so magnetic about the scene playing before me, a White Rabbit pull. In the reel of a moment, I became Alice, hypnotically tranced nto the magic wonderland of those two fairy goddesses sitting so close to each other, whispering, giggling at some clandestine joke shared between them.

I observed their eyes as they gazed upon each other. So pure. And when the fairy mother gently brushed off a misplaced strand of her daughter's hair, there was a prayer of sacredness in the act.

And slowly I watched how their fingers instinctively entwined, and how at that pivotal moment they slowly eased each other's head to gently rest side by side. Like two inseparable soul mates who had flown thirteen spans of a lifetime to another...that was what they were.

I had never never ever witnessed such devoted poignant intimate connection between mother and daughter in an atmosphere of supreme surreality. The world was nowhere. It was not west, or east, or south or north. It was not even Earth. It was framed - there. Only there.

And in the pin of a tear and the thug of my heart, there was and is no physical world to speak of, no difference, no separation,no death, I realized. Only the living spirit of moments...gaps of heaven between people....here, there, living..always...

but...not everyone can see...

So I sat there in my space, soaking in their love; speechless in my silence....

watching.....watching..as life unfolds a movie......just for me.