Life’s designs take on the hues of a colorful drama at the gelateria, a warm inviting urban coffee shop with the usual variety of speciality coffees. Of course, being a gelateria it specializes in Italian ice cream as well. It has a few stuffed chairs and conversation is available around a “tavolini” (Italian – small table), of which there are five. I commandeer a tavolini most mornings. While occupied with reading or writing, I observe the drama around me. One of the definitions of “drama” is “any situation or series of events having vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or results.”
It was at the gelateria, that I had a late night conversation with a couple of friends recently discussing life choices, job decisions and organizational ethics, structure, and processes–one an emerging educator, the other still searching. I remember being young and filled with idealism and energy. By the time I was their age, I had a graduate degree and had already nailed down my niche in the professional world with three years into my career. However, contemporary youth culture has stretched farther into the lifecycle. Taking on the responsibility for and trappings of being adult has pushed further into life than was acceptable when I young. I married late as a twenty-seven-year-old, which today, in some circles, would be early. It seemed these young, barely thirty-somethings, were still searching for life, waiting for it to settle down and be what they envisioned, instead of living it.
Around 11:30 AM on Labor Day, a couple enter the gelateria and order drinks, she a specialty coffee and he an iced drink. They sit across a corner of a table from each other. He sits with his arms on the table, wrists crossed, and looks off to the side with a sadness dripping from his face. She is watching him closely, her eyes never wavering. He’s not looking at her and she gently places her hand on his arm. He turns his sad eyes and looks at her. She slides her hand on his arm to his hand. He wraps his fingers around her hand and looks with deep appreciation into her eyes. Gradually they engage in conversation and he begins talking. After a few minutes, a smile comes as he talks. She gives an occasional affirmative response. A piece of life’s design is taking shape in the gelateria on Washington Avenue.
Some people might call these vignettes drama, and in a very significant way, they are. Life is a colorful drama, a story enacted sometimes for private audiences and at other times for the world, events of vivid, emotional, sometimes conflicting interest. These dramas are filled with a delightfully evolving kaleidoscope of colorful lives that weave in and out of each other. Each of us contribute to and find value in these dramas making life’s designs beautiful, sometimes heroic, often unsettling, but always colorful. These are our lives.
