A stranger passes

I've just today ended a (rather short) era - the era of a Guest-on-my-couch-for-a-month. It was a fairly interesting time, and it passed rather as I'd expected it to - swiftly, pleasantly, with no major upheavals.

I have quite a small apartment - it should be called a 4 1/2, except that neither bedroom has a closet, and the smaller bedroom is quite occupied by the detritus brought here from a house - a house where three generations of my family had lived, though I don't think I can quite get away with blaming them for all my mess.

Suffice it to say that the small room is packed from floor to ceiling on all the walls, as well as in the middle, so really, I have a one-bedroom place to live in.

A Pal of mine had been having one difficulty after another finding a place he could afford, trying to be a good dad while working one measly low-life part-time job and putting megagobs of energy into trying to start a business. Add disagreements with an O.C.D. friend of his and an ex and three teenagers trying out their whims on him, and I simply felt that Pal could use a break, and offered him my couch while he found his own place.

It is one thing to have a body on one's couch when that couch is in the basement of a house, and quite another to have said body on said couch when said apartment really only has one bedroom.

Gone were the late-night runnings of the dishwasher, or putting on of laundry. Gone also were the early morning vaccumings, washing, more dishwashering… The layout is quite "open" - so that meant that turning on the lights was something I had to do after Pal's alarm would ring - initially a full hour after I got up!

Pal was really pleasant all those days I woke him up, which was, incidentally, ALL of the days he stayed here. He'd wish me a good morning. Had our places been reversed, I doubt I could have been so agreeable an hour before my alarm was due to go off!

I'd bring him orange juice, he'd feed the cat; I'd go away on weekends, he'd put the garbage out on the right days - we somehow got along through both our schedules, his much more hectic than mine.

I didn't get to watch much baseball - apparently the Canadiens are making an uscheduled run at the Stanley Cup, and Pal is a big hockey fan. Since the Jays traded Roy Halladay, my heart hasn't been into the game as much this spring, so I just asked Boyfriend to record my shows for me and let Pal watch his games on my tiny tv.

Well, today Pal took almost his last possession away, leaving only an old clunker of a computer in my "extra" room, and I immediately leapt into action at 10:15 p.m., starting laundry and loading and running the dishwasher. It is a relief to get back to - I hesitate to use the phrase "normal" in anything connected with my life - but part of me wonders just what happened here this past month.

I think I gave a friend in need shelter and an ear to bounce some thoughts off of. But I don't feel I know Pal one whit better than before, and I think this is what gives me pause.

See, I'm no good at chit-chat, or surface conversations. I want to get to the good part, the meaty part, the juicy part, all the time. I never get tired of analyzing feelings, for example, or discussing the Meaning of Life - and I don't mean the film!

But I didn't learn anything about Pal this month. Nothing I didn't know already. I don't know if he learned anything about me, one would hope so, but these days I don't seem to have a lot of hope hanging around waiting to be tacked on to this or that issue.

And I find it sad that two individuals can rub shoulders and get in each other's way for thirty days without learning anything about the other person.

That we both managed to be agreeable and personable to each other, at our advanced age, is a minor miracle. Perhaps I should try to be content with that.

And tonight when he picked up the last of his stuff, save for the aforementioned boat anchor in the storage room, I had another Friend over and we were watching Star Trek on DVD, and I was tired and grumpy and nearly shoved him out the door. Not my nicest moment. He seemed to take it in good humor, as always.

But I think I could have been a little kinder.