Day 4: Team building

It happens in so many ways. For me, it was finding Susan at breakfast, joined by Lisa, then Shani at community meeting. It was sitting with the whole group, listening to our common frustrations with research methodology and being glad for Gary's willingness to help. It was walking three miles to a restaurant that Amy's friend had told her about back in Miami and finding it was as good as promised. Maybe--and most emotionally charged for me-- it was finding out I had been Lisa's mom's nurse for a time.

I've had many people that I sat with in the darkest hours of their lives. Not all of them touched me as deeply as Ellen had. When Lisa and I figured out this odd piece of synchronicity, I found myself fighting back tears. When I met her mother, Ellen, it had only been a year since I sat with my dad on what my brother and I called the "night shift." (If you don't know the song by the Commodores, take some time to check it out.) Ellen was an amazing woman. She was full of the fight that I always admire in my heroes. She and I shared the night shift. We talked many times until dawn the way people do when they figure nobody else is listening. I remember the girls--heating up dinner for them sometimes. This afternoon I watch the sidewalk as Lisa and I walk and talk, hoping not to stumble, humbled by the way life circles on itself.

After dinner we catch a cab back to the hotel for an Org Systems team building evening. We all start with a little singing and end with a lot of laughing. I'm more than a little mystified by the connections that have brought me here and the camaraderie I've found. It's hard not to suspect some greater force at work. But whatever--tomorrow is another full day and in the big scheme of things, sleep will be required if I expect to parse the mysteries of it all.