Today was TAX DAY for good ole Keith. I often dread this day with its prerequisite of calculating receipts, FINDING receipts.
But the ride down the 110 to Gardena to pow wow with my tax lady Carol Montague is always a worthwhile dread. Carol is real people. Straight-forward, honest and funny. Last year Carol was a little under the weather during tax time: she was suffering from bizarre light-headedness that she was remedying with herbs and small meals every few hours. She was concerned, but completely diligent with her tax expertise. Today Carol looked great: rested, upright and smiling. And I told her so. Something I always do when I'm moved or intrigued by a person's explosive inner-being. She pulled me outside in the sun. She said she hates to miss the sun. And it disappears somewhere after noon. She also pointed out the trees. And how they were swaying in the yard but not the ones across the street. She found that to be fascinating. So did I. She said this mythic ocean breeze happened three times a day. And that she hated to miss that, too.

I had NEVER seen Carol like this. Free-flowing and unleashed.

Carol's confession was that her spirit had died in 1965, the day of her wedding. She said she didn't know it then, but after years and years of feeling silenced, she's finally divorced her husband and she's feeling REBORN. Alive. "And having fun being me". She took me into her studio where hundreds of small ceramic sculptures were displayed [she was an artist]. I gleamed, she laughed.

She also told me the story of when she moved to Gardena in 1968 and how one day she went outside wearing a floppy crochet hat [she confessed she used to crochet as well]. She was saying how there were only a few families of color living in the neighborhood then and how the police decided to stop her and... then suddenly everything she was saying sounded like mythic ocean breeze as my mind slipped away into feeling something familiar. Something warmly nestled behind my heart. I looked at Carol as she was talking and I thought: I've known her before. The crochet hat, the free flowing rebirth of spirit. Somewhere when I was a boy I knew that girl. And that girl wearing her very own floppy crochet hat made me happy. I snapped out of my lapse and realized Carol was pulling back inside the office. And I just looked at her and smiled. She made me happy. Happy that she was so happy and sharing it with ME.

We concluded our tax session with me offering my signature on a few forms and then our big hug goodbye. And as she walked me out the gate and watched me walk to my car I couldn't help but to think: This lady is living testament to second chances! This lady is real real special.

Until next TAX time,

Keith