Chance meetings are so unpredictable

The last place you expect to see your long ago ex-girlfriend is at the dog park, but there she was standing cooling in the shade while the dogs frolicked in the muddy water of the river. She didn't recognize me at first, but when I lifted my sunglasses to the brim of my baseball cap and called her name, she looked at me as if I were vaguely familiar.

Not until I said my name did her eyes flash and a genuine smile replaced the polite one. I don't blame her for not remembering. It's been well over 25 years since we last saw each other. And it wasn't on the best of terms.

Rewind...
She'd just returned from the Bering Strait where she'd been an interpreter for an American fishing vessel translating with the Russian fishing crews who haggled over species and quantities, and vodka and Communism. It was hard work, she later told me, and depressing not because of the dwindling fish populations, but because, as she said, the Russians were a "beaten people."

She, by heritage, is Ukrainian. She spent the first years of her life in a farming village outside of Chernobyl before her parents moved her to New York City. It was years later before nuclear radiation melted her homeland, and when it did, I pictured all that beautiful agricultural landscape she'd described to me covered in some kind of dirty, glowing slime.

She lived in New York until right before we first met. In the early 1980s she moved to Seattle to try something different and though she didn't have a job when she first arrived, she was in high demand as an interpreter once employers knew she could speak Russian.

We weren't girlfriends for long. In fact, I'm not really sure how we met. I think it was at the University in one class or another, perhaps in the hallways of the History department or maybe in the Women's Studies offices where I worked part-time. As time will do, I don't really remember why we were attracted to each other. She was calm and reserved. I was athletic and humorous. She enjoyed carpentry and modern dance. I enjoyed long bicycle rides and softball.

I met her after I'd broken up with another girlfriend. That relationship ended when my then partner had an endless stream of affairs with women from her work. She got the apartment we lived in when we split-- a wonderful top story of a house down by the lake -- and I ended up living in a studio apartment off the freeway. It was a horrible dive of a place, but it afforded me enough distance to lick my wounds and figure out what I wanted to do next.

What I did next is complicated and a little awkward. I quit my profitable job at the television station and went back to school. I'd actually done that just before the break up, but now I'd really done it as I was truly on my own and venturing into new territory. I went back to school to earn a history degree and the next step was to earn my teaching certification, but my new found freedom often got in the way of my success.

I had a job at a bicycle shop, played on two softball teams, took a full load of classes, and without a car, rode my bicycle back and forth across the city five, sometimes six times a day. That was the complicated part.

The awkward part, which wasn't really awkward back then feels a tad bit embarrassing now, the "what were you thinking" kind of embarrassing. I had three girlfriends at the time. One played on my softball team, the other was a good friend (we still are today) and the third was the Ukrainian New Yorker. While the other two knew about each other, no one knew about the Ukrainian New Yorker nor did she know anything about the other two. Hence the endless pedaling from job to sex to school to sex to job to home to more sex.

I had a lot of energy in my mid-twenties.

I'm not sure why I didn't tell her about the others. She seemed more fragile perhaps or less open to "sharing" and when she went off on the fishing boat, there wasn't any real point to telling her what I was doing while she was away.

She'd write these beautiful letters to me that often arrived in bunches since it was rare that mail left the ship with any consistency. I wrote back occasionally, but never with the same verve or commitment. I was hoping through my negligence, she'd get the hint that she wasn't as important to me as I appeared to be to her.

It all sounds so cruel now, but really it was more stupidity and innocence, the inability to be honest not only with everyone in my life, but even with myself. I could list out all the reasons why I needed to be so devious, but it not only sounds cruel, it sounds as if I was beyond irresponsible and venturing into reckless.

If you truly knew me -- then and now -- reckless is not a word that comes to mind. I am fairly cautious and always have been. These then can be classified as my wild years when I threw all caution to the wind and lived only for myself and my earthly desires.

When she did return ,smelling of fish and still swaying from the crashing swells of the ocean we hung out together for a few weeks, but even she could feel the distance between us. Finally I told her I needed to end it, though I'm certain I wasn't that direct. I do remember that she cried. I understand why. She'd poured out her guts to me in those letters and I'd just walked away carrying all that love on the back of my traveled bicycle.

I walked away from one of the other girlfriends, too. It was a mutual decision -- she was seeing someone else as well and wanted to pursue it as a potential relationship. As for the third girlfriend, we tried for a few years, but eventually she had an affair with her best friend and I was left right where I started -- alone and living in a dump.

I landed my first teaching job shortly after that and left all of them behind to start out fresh in a completely different environment -- a small town two hours and a ferry boat ride from the city. My luck with girlfriends didn't run much better after that. I dated an alcoholic for awhile and then another woman who also had affairs during our relationship. Finally I settled down in a long-term relationship and after 10 years, I was the one to leave finally figuring out that nothing was going to fill the void I felt inside except for me.

My life has landed here -- in a relationship that feels exactly right, in a house that feels spacious and warm, and with friends who value what I value -- laughter, nature, and monogamy.

So when I spotted the Ukrainian New Yorker standing under the shade of the tree I was surprised.

Pleasantly.

"My god, you haven't changed a bit." Her New Yorker accent was thick and rich with hints of Ukrainian rattling around in the background.

"Twenty pounds heavier and a whole lot grayer," I laughed and pulled up my baseball cap.

"I know the feeling," she smiled back. She didn't though. She was gray around the edges, but she was still petite and thin, her dark Ukrainian eyes the prominent feature on her face.

It's amazing what 25 years of distance can do for you. Maybe, like me, she didn't remember all the details of our last meeting. Maybe she'd forgotten that I was an ass, insensitive and self-absorbed because she greeted me and talked with me as if we were long lost friends and not bitterly parted lovers.

"What are you doing now?" I asked.

"I live in New York and teach Modern Dance at NYU." If her accent hadn't been so edgy I could have easily guessed she'd moved back to New York. "And my partner and I have a 10-year old son."

"That's great," I exclaimed and then we stood there awkwardly catching glimpses of each other out of the corner of our eyes while we pretended to watch the dogs play in the river.

"And you?" she asked.

"Currently unemployed after 22 years of teaching." I'm still working on how to introduce myself and my new path, but it worked.

"Wow! What's next?"

"Dog training, perhaps. A dog walking business. Something different than kids," I laughed, a tad worried I'd just offended her son that I didn't even know.

"Oh wow," she smiled and turned to another woman who was standing close by. "This is Maureen and we're here at the park because she owns a dog walking business."

And from there the conversation flowed around dogs and business-owning and everything else that really didn't matter.

In the end we exchanged phone numbers. She's in town for another few weeks and her partner and son will join her next week. I'm not sure who will call whom first or if we'll just let the chance meeting remain a chance meeting.

We hugged then and parted. I walked toward the grassy fields to dry off the dogs and she headed up the wooded path with Maureen. A half hour later we saw each other in the parking lot. We'd parked right next to each other.

"Odd that I'd meet you once, but now twice!" She threw up her hands and looked amazingly like the woman I dated 25 years ago.

It was her smile, I thought on the drive home. It was that smile that attracted me the first time.

The last place you'd expect to see a smile like that is at a dog park on a hot summer's day, but there you have it. Chance meetings are so unpredictable.