This holiday season, we had a good run of visits with dear old friends, with the geographically scattered people who have known and loved us through changes in size, hair line and color, career, home, even occasionally politics. For a time a black man in a white shirt buttoned all the way up to his neck played tenor saxophone in the Porter Square subway station during the morning rush hour.
But he recognized me as a jazz fan, and was even more eager to discuss music when he learned that I was an aspiring sax player. Were particular T stops or times of day more lucrative than others? Did certain songs more reliably fill his case with change? But this soft-spoken man was careful and vague in his answers, unwilling to complain or judge. I find a different kind of ease He beamed. The locker room companions from my water aerobics class lend my life the same sort of comforting constancy.
We talk about the weather or some new move that our instructor has introduced. The kind of trust that enables us to reveal our sags, folds, and puckers might not survive outside the changing room.
They are the people with whom I can chat with anonymous comfort, if not consequence. Like the stops on the red line or the numbers on the banks of beige lockers, they orient me, lending human form and structure to each of my days. And for that, this Jewish girl is grateful. Skip to main content. Resume Listen Live.
