"Turn right here! No, turn left, right here! " "Oh, gosh, we missed it."
This conversation happens fairly frequently when I'm driving somewhere with my friend, Pat, who directed the high school choirs that I've been accompanying for the past 14 years. I consider her a teacher extraordinaire, as well as one of my dearest friends, even if she isn't very good at directions.
Our partnership works for many reasons, and most likely because we complement each other's strengths and weaknesses.
Pat is the epitome of a right brained personality.
And me? You guessed it.
Once we ran into a former student at a restaurant. He introduced us to his friends by saying, "This is Ms. H, my music teacher, and this is Mrs. Rowan - she's Ms. H's left brain."
Yes, that was me, scurrying around behind her picking up the purse, the keys, the music she left behind. That was me, organizing the schedule, sending the registration forms for festival in on time, double checking the calendar to make sure there wasn't a concert she had forgotten to tell me about.
That was also me, listening to the choir sing beautifully, or watching a perfectly crafted musical or theatrical production she directed, and understanding that a mind so full of creative ideas simply didn't have room to store mundane things like keeping track of keys, or schedules - or directions!
Nevertheless, being the other half of someones brain gets tiring after a while. I took a "sabbatical" from my left brained duties, and went to work in a nice, quiet office where my organizational skills came to good use.
But I missed being around all that creative energy of hers, the way she sees rainbows in every rainy day, the way she seems to bring out the best in even the most troubled kid. She encourages my left brain to lean a little more to the right, prompting me to take a few of the creative risks that have enriched my life, and keeping me in balance with myself and the world. And have I inspired her left brain to work a little more efficiently? Yesterday, she told me about a recent shopping expedition to a local mall, where she was wandering through the parking lot headed toward her car when her eye was caught by a distant rainbow. Marveling at the unexpected beauty of this treat, she stowed her packages in the car and drove off, eyes still on the multi colored drama in the afternoon sky. She left her purse on the ground in the parking lot. Luckily, some other nice, left brained person found it, searched out her ID, and called her home. They met at a nearby coffee shop later on that day, where she retrieved her purse completely intact. I guess it all balances out in the end. here are more opposing views on left and right