Accidentally Meant To Be

It was the last train out of town, and I was lucky to catch it. I had packed in a hurry. As though, if I deliberated, I might change my mind. My next door neighbor said she would feed my cat while I was gone. My boss was pissed about my quitting without even a day's notice. But, it served him right, for not appreciating me more. My companion on the night train was a tiny old Asian woman. Her name was Suzuka. She had come from Tokyo to the states, some 30 years ago. She had apprenticed as a seamstress here. And now she designed clothes for women. Being an insomniac, I listened to it all. She had come from so far away to Manhattan. She had little money, but she made it there. It was hard at first, she sewed missing buttons back on, and repaired zippers at a dry cleaning place. One day, a guy named Bob Dylan came in. He asked that she sew a button on the back of his coat, that had no function at all. He was a funny guy. But he paid her well.

I hadn't a clue why I had jumped a train to the Southwest. Some kinda claustrophobia, perhaps. Pure escapism. The woman's stories were enchanting. She had come from an impoverished sector of Tokyo as a child, to America, and somehow had run into Bob Dylan! Her father died a gruesome death in the aftermath of Hiroshima's bombing. It was a lot to wrap my brain around. I had always had guilty feelings about those days, when my country laid so many to waste. But, then she returned to the subject of what she does now. She got this idea, to fashion clothing for men and women, and children, as well. What made it work, was that she caught onto the youthful energy of artists in the city. She would go to their gallery shows, and talk to them of their work. She would make them a proposition. I would give you a bolt of linen, you would paint on it. I would make it into clothing. I would split the money with you. She made a fortune in that psychedelic era. As to why she was riding a train in the middle of the night, to nowhere in particular? She was burnt out on the whole damn scene. She wanted to go to New Mexico, or Arizona, and just watch the sky roll by.

I am not sure why she wound up being my mentor. It was just something that happened. I lived with her, and apprenticed. I cooked her meals, and I prepared her sewing room. I watched her wither slowly away. I washed paint around on linens, and one day, she made a dress for herself out of that. It turned out to be the dress she was buried in.