Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [66]
While he fixed the meal, he asked with a keen interest about my work and my life. He refilled our glasses, lit a candle, and served us, never interrupting the flow of questioning or my responses. This was how I’d often prepare dinner for a friend back home, and I was enjoying being the guest. The wine was a truth serum, and I felt comfortable giving in to the gently somber mood of this house and of the holiday. I could tell this man everything, and he wouldn’t care or judge me; we were strangers thrown together in an odd place at an interesting moment in time, and we weren’t likely to ever cross paths again beyond the borders of Bhutan. And so I poured out the highlights of my life as if I were in a confessional—the good, the bad, the ugly, scenes from my life I hadn’t shared even with people I considered good friends. I ended with how now, in my forties, I couldn’t help wondering “if” about everything.
Martin looked straight at me, the glow of the candle all that was lighting the room. The only light outside the kitchen window came from the waxing moon; everything around us was perfectly still. Every once in a while, one of the house dogs dutifully guarding the front door would yawn, as if to remind us we weren’t alone. I had this hunch Martin would understand the notion of loss, since he’d experienced such a profound one himself. He had on his face an expression of pure empathy, and I wasn’t ashamed of anything I’d said. Or anything that had happened in my life.
“I think everyone, if they’re paying attention, asks the ‘if’ question,” Martin said, breaking the silence. “Sounds like we’re both in a state.”
“Well, I’m in a different state, of course, than you.” My losses were ephemeral. He had a longtime partner and children somewhere else in the world.
“Yes. It never occurred to me this might happen.”
“It must be very hard not to see your kids.”
“Eight thousand four hundred and seventy miles,” he said without a second of calculation. The light from the candle flickered in his eyes; I could feel his sadness and the purity of his emotion. “It is very difficult.”
I breathed deep and steady. I wanted to thank Sebastian or karma or whoever it was who’d led me here to Bhutan, to this place where the people, the conversations, everyday life was what I hoped it could be. I felt better here, freer than I ever had, more me than ever before.
Abruptly, he stood up and cleared the dinner plates, poured two glasses of port, and said, “Let’s go to the living room.”
To do that, you had to walk through a formal dining area; I squinted to see if in the darkness I could make out a picture of his family, but I couldn’t. Walking into the living room was like landing in Narnia—a magical, dictionary definition of a family room, hidden, beautiful, warm. I wondered: What had happened here in those six years? The life that had unfolded in this house was still so present. A child’s drum set in one corner; several plush couches inviting you to sink in; enough books, CDs, DVDs to stock a small public library—fiction, science, Asian themed, Euro themed—kid’s stuff everywhere. The moon shone in from one of the windows, and the stars were bright; I was drunk from the wine and getting drunker just smelling the port. Here I was in Bhutan in this beautiful space with this complicated man, and I never wanted to leave.
But of course, I had to. At some point—some point very soon, in fact. The clock was ticking toward the end of my stay. And that was okay. It was more than okay; it was perfect, actually. The Himalayan air, the very notion of Gross National Happiness, and the exercise of the three good things—the cocktail of them had convinced me to embrace the moment before me, now, to appreciate it for what it was, but not to hold it so tight that I never let it go. For another moment would occur, and then another.
As content as I felt right now, I felt heartbroken,