Back Story

I walked swiftly to the café feeling haggard and stressed, trying desperately to get it together before dinner with a friend and two new acquaintances. Already 30 minutes late and having arrived in my friend's minivan with a speed suggestive of an East Coast errand run, I tried to hide what clearly was stress and exhaustion written all over my face. 

As I neared the café entrance, I somehow began to recall Chevy Chase's line from the movie Funny Farm: "Cue the deer." Translation: Make it all look perfect. Chevy Chase was trying to sell potential home buyers on a town that he despised. I was trying to sell our new friends on the fact that I was fine.

I failed. Miserably.

Within seconds of connecting inside the café, one of the women with whom we were meeting smiled, motioned me to come and sit down, and then looked immediately for the waiter.

"This woman needs a drink!" she said.

Happy tears of relief started to fill my eyes followed by much needed laughter. She got it — all of it — and fast.

My margarita quickly arrived. More conversation then ensued during which the woman shared in her own humorous way that she fancied herself a "people whisperer."  

"A people whisperer?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "I just see people from the inside, and you were having a day." 

I was, but so was she I soon learned.

And then it happened — the inspiration for this blog. My new friend said she was thinking about her life and where it was going, and to figure it out, she was heading to Lake Erie for the weekend to have herself a quality float on the water.

A "quality float."

The phrase stayed with me long after the dinner ended, and as I thought more about it, I realized what she meant. She wasn't wanting a quick float. She wasn't scheduling a set time for the float. And it was definitely not a my-whole-family-is-going-to-the-beach float. It was her float, one where she would let the waves take her wherever, where she could smile if she wanted to, laugh loudly if she felt like it, cry if she needed, and just have time to think.

We all need to find our own quality floats. Welcome to mine.