the red thread was longing

from the sea  (5) - Baubo’s bird ludes by freda karpf

Baubo came into Mrs. Scattergood’s life for a season and got there early in spring to be ready for it.  The one family season that Mrs. Scattergood knew before forgetting and grief was summer.  People might ask themselves the why of it all.  Mrs. Scattergood didn’t. She just welcomed Baubo into her stream of her being. 

     It’s entirely possible that you meet people late in life solely for the purpose of introducing you to things you’d been missing. Anais Nin wrote that "Friendships nurture all that has been lost in our lives."  Memories have come alive because of Baubo’s presence. Desires and ghosts too. The golem has nothing on her and she had an entire beach front to work the sand up into whatever she wanted.

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     The possibility of being met is embedded in the idea of beshert. You may have to go through trials and any number of un-fated meetings; but eventually, you will be met.  In a sense, because fate would have the coupling that you desire, it is similar to the notion of being called.  A soul mate calls to one. Distance is collapsed.  Or becomes inconsequential. Or it is bridged.  Fate and soul are fused so that fate means soul-mate. Just as beshert is beshert. Just this way, Baubo and Mrs. Scattergood were connected. Each had notions of why and how. For Mrs. Scattergood it was fate, of which kind, she was not sure. For Baubo it was the soup, the need she perceived in Mrs. Scattergood and the sense of mischief she loved to use even if only as a lens on this world. She also sensed that Mrs. Scattergood’s red thread was longing.  She was there to see what that longing was all about.

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     Mrs. Scattergood paired passion with grief. Right there in the kitchen. That’s when Baubo appeared.  There’s no way of knowing how your energies and emotions will get diverted over the decades.  Who could predict that with any sort of accuracy?  Baubo could.  Or Mrs. Scattergood’s soup had quite the come hither and drew Baubo from her world to this narrow spit of a wetland and Mrs. Scattergood’s home.

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     Baubo told Mrs. Scattergood about the red thread. It is a way through, a passage. The thread pulls a person through whatever it is that has them confined. If you find a thread you are connected to the source on the other end.

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  Mrs. Scattergood might be connected to it but she could not summon passion. She would have to pull her way back to it as if she repelled through the years to the depths where passion could not dive. She joked with Baubo that she once wished she could have allowed herself to go after women the way some pick out cigars.  She didn’t care if they were in a humidor or not.  She just wanted to smoke.

~    

     People find their way here.  "Beshert is beshert." When used as a noun, it means "soul mate" or the one with whom you were destined to be.  Fate is something we all get whether we want it or not. She was destined to be with Baubo. 

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf