“same time, next year”

I think of this every year now and it still gets me.

Every year, during The Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon, which was this morning, I think of an old customer of mine from little Boheme and his yearly marathon rendezvous.

This is what I wrote when he first told me about it two years ago:

…. He says he always stands at the same location every year to watch the runners and he always runs into the same woman and that they just chat and watch the marathon. So he says, “Now we have a kind of ‘Same Time, Next Year’ thing going on with the marathon. I’ll be standing in that spot tomorrow and I bet she shows up.” They just hang out for that brief period of time of the marathon; that’s all. It’s not romantic in the classic man/woman sense — (mainly because he’s gay) — but the fact that he does that and she does that, I dunno; it’s still romantic to me. It’s two people giving over to a kind of whimsy. They have no connection in life otherwise, but they are each other’s spontaneous marathon date. Every year, they are committed to that moment. And he was so looking forward to seeing her. His face just lit up talking about it and he was thoroughly unabashed, totally surrendered to what those moments are — their secret shimmering ritual.

It made my heart burst a little. The weird random ways that people connect. The ways they find each other. The spark of all that. How it has its own life, its own electric tingle. It’s like some divine serendipity. God’s a romantic, he is, up there in his heaven, not wanting people to be alone, just giddy sometimes with the ways he allows people to collide.

And, you know, every year when I think of this, I think of my customer, my friend, and smile because I just know he surrenders to the whimsy and brings her flowers.

I just know it.

He’s just that way.