What it meant to have a conversation with Mary

A few weeks back a friend texted me to say how lonely she is.

She didn’t say she was lonely. She said how little enthusiasm she has for her work or for “anything, really.” She has no steam. She is always tired.

My training as a dancer has made me sensitive to the pitch and tone of all things; to how closely we have to pay attention to hear not only what someone is saying, but what they are trying to say. “Why don’t I give you a call?” I wrote, fulfilling a promise I made to myself the day I met Mary.

And because these days I write only what I enjoy writing, I was immediately gratified by meeting Mary. What writer wouldn’t be?

Mary is the reason I am taking my voice back, something that feels necessary for my well-being. I don’t think texts are enough for important conversations, so I will no longer let myself think that they are. I know people enable dictation and talk into their phones, creating texts the length of a page, and I’ve vowed not to be one of them.

Despite current trends, I am coming to terms with the fact that if our voices are to be heard, they must be spoken. Aloud. To someone who will listen. And we are going to have to be adamant about this because there is so much money to be made by keeping us communicating solely on our devices. All you have to do is watch the documentary " The Social Dilemma " to understand why.

A neighbor told me to watch it like he meant it, which he did.

The film isn’t overly confessional, as I recall, but it did confirm that we may have a societal problem when the very software engineers who developed our social media platforms admit they don’t want their own children to use them. Watching it felt a bit like when I was fifteen and just realizing something about my life ― that it is actually my life.

As soon as my friend answered her phone, it was pretty clear she had likely spent too much time alone since the death of her partner, so that she talked on and on, as if propelled by the sound of her own voice. I feared I’d made a mistake. She is grieving. She is righting herself. I kept trying to interject, and kept failing. So I decided just to listen.

But this amount of listening takes time. More time than a lot of us have in a day. Yet the image of her sitting on her couch alone and obviously devastated, urged making the time right out of me.

Eventually our conversation took on a more natural give and take.

When I spotted Mary sitting on a bench that sits across from Moritani Preserve, I’d just come from a chance encounter with a coyote: Our eyes met, then we both looked forward in the direction where I was cycling and he was running, then we looked over at each other again before he tore through the brush.

Mary was reserved at first. But I had to tell some one about that coyote ― and with that, everything changed.

Just offshore, two herons stood motionless as our conversation led to all the newcomers to Kitsap County (like me), her assessment of present day Seattle (I was pretty blown away by how closely she follows urban policy making), and to Kamala Harris. “Well,” she said, “we’ll see.”

I tried to ignore the butterflies in my chest, fearing what November could bring, knowing what looms . But you get in trouble pretty quickly if you assume what someone’s politics are. I sat quietly, thinking how our chat up until then never had me thinking right or left. I thought how some discussions revitalize us, and I thought that we always have to listen to one side to get to the other, and be sure to listen again.

One of the herons speared a small, silvery fish. Sometimes I think the most valuable thing I’ve learned up until now is simply to breathe in moments like these.

When I left the city, I wanted time to focus on my work and be content with my life, a life that, I’d started to realize several years before I finally made the move, had already begun to guide me, so I didn’t really need to start over. Emotionally, I was already living this life, one with more time to study a heron and get to know an interesting stranger. And when I wake in the morning and take in the slightly musty scent of decomposing leaves that just pervades the air this time of year, I can hardly believe it took me so long to come to this realization than making a change had ever taken before.

Mary said I’d be inspired by our sitting together, that I’d know just what to write when I got home.

Actually this piece was pretty much written before I got home. Mary began it the moment she wanted to hear more about “my” coyote.

And my friend who is having a hard time?

I hope she is a little less lonely now that all those words locked inside of her found their way out to be heard by us both.

Mary Lou Sanelli is the author of In So Many Words, a new collection of writings about living in the Northwest. Also a dance teacher and a speaker, she lives with her husband on Bainbridge Island. Visit her at www.marylousanelli.com .

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: What it meant to have a conversation with Mary