score

I woke up early and was just about to tiptoe out into the early light of the morning when Evan came out of his room.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, did I wake you up?”

“No, not at all,” he said sleepily. “I just wanted to say it was really nice meeting you, and we should keep in touch.”

“Absolutely,” I said, and we hugged goodbye.

He went back inside and I headed north, along the narrow streets of his neighborhood, through a park and a back lot and to a main thoroughfare with a roomy bike lane that would eventually take me to Tufts. And I thought:

What if everyone you knew was a melody? Each person with their own time signature, key, instrumentation, theme; with beginnings and endings, patterns and evolution, a story to tell. With some of them you might harmonize, and I suppose you could call that love. Others might be dissonant, but what’s life without a little discord?

I found harmony with Evan and his friends, but then I moved on. I’m always moving on. My family so far away, my friendships so temporary, sometimes even just an evening. In their symphonies a faint pianissimo, a measure or two of music, and then a fermata suspended over a rest.

The melody of a traveler: a solo no one else can hear.