Cafe Hitch-hike

2022-02-02

This meditation about self-acceptance

I sit in my home multipurpose room; it serves as an office, guest sleeping area, library, storage unit (at least the closet does), and meditation/ prayer/ hoodoo room. It used to also be a gym but now it's more for floor calisthenics. It used to have a TV (where I watched the January 6 insurrection with a resigned surprise), but guests usually use the wifi to watch stuff on their mobile devices. With that and the little use of the TV, it's since been deactivated.

I was here tonight to view an online guided prayer and meditation. Tonight's was deep, and the guide sang songs after a while. I had my rattle and swished it in tune for a good part of her singing (they couldn't hear it). Marley the dog rested in her dog bed that was moved from the living room to here.

My meditation's focus was on self acceptance. Towards the end of my meditation, a recollection drifted into my memory...

**Cue misty air / Dry ice special FX, hahahah**

...I worked for an attorney after my teaching internship. It was his birthday and I wanted to give him a small but thoughtful gift (and, I was very broke because he didn't pay well but I stayed long enough for the work experience). I went downtown to hand deliver some documents to the courthouse, and I thought I'd get his gift while I was in the area. I knew he liked fly fishing and went to a nearby bait shop because it was close to the middle school where I had part of my internship 2 years before that.

Anna, a tomboyish teenaged girl, sat behind the counter and was crouched by a mounted magnifying glass where she made fly lures. She made exactly what I was looking for. The teen was dressed like she was ready to hit a creek with a rod and reel. She also wore a white and blue cap with 'Norway' embroidered on it along with its national flag. I asked her about the flies, and they were reasonably priced. I then asked her about her hat. She cheerfully told me she returned from visiting Norway as an exchange student for the summer.

'Cheerfully' was too weak of a work. Anna seemed engaged with making flies, but I heard a joy in her voice and saw it on her face as she told me about her trip. She spoke at length about it, like she couldn't wait to talk about it. She also said her grandparents had Norwegian heritage so she always wanted to visit. Her father (who I thought was her grandfather) eventually came out of his office, he and her mother owned the bait shop.

I was quite delighted to get some flies, but even more so to hear about Anna's recent adventure. She concluded by saying she wished she could had spent a semester or year abroad, but was ready to start her senior year of high school. The young lady carefully put a half dozen newly made flies into a small, plastic container and handed them to me.

It wasn't so much that I judged her, but I noticed she donned fishing clothes, made lures, and gladly worked for her parents. A teen was happy to be around older people? She returned from what was probably her dream trip and she looked so happy. She didn't seem concerned with looking like a cool kid; if anything, she seemed content with what she was doing. It was a pleasure to meet her and to get to know her experience.

The attorney really liked the flies and asked here I got them. I felt like the experience of meeting the teen who made the flies was also part of the gift that got passed along to him. The gift was small, the teen was a fishing tomboy rather than a cheerleader type, but something about all of those exchanges stayed with me and came back to me for this meditation about self-acceptance.

Post-script: I was curious and followed up. According to a 5-year old newspaper article and the bait shop's current social media posts, it is still going strong. It first opened its doors in 1981 and Anna took the helm in 2016 when her father decided to retire. She was only a few credits shy of getting a natural sciences degree from my alma mater (hahaa) and moved the shop up the street to a less expensive location when she took ownership. The shop has a resident kitty (name undetermined). In the article, she talked about fishing and the outdoors, and was photographed wearing fishing gear, a local team's jersey, and a baseball cap 16 years after our interaction. Anna seemed as content as I remembered her.

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