At 8:00 a.m. this morning I met with a beautiful woman whom I used to teach. She is also my friend's daughter, and it was her mother who reconnected us after all these years.
I suggested we take an early morning walk.
A walk is what I suggest when I want to bring a new friend into my circle. Or when I want to catch up with an old friend. A walk is the perfect setting for friendship. It's what my colleagues and I do bi-weekly to discuss an assigned podcast, a documentary, or a book.
After a quick hug and needed expressions of, "You look so good! It's so good to see you. It's been too long," we are off. The real conversation begins with a memory she had just shared with her 16 year-old daughter.
"Was it Tony that only washed one side of the car when he took you on your first date?"
"It was!"
"I shared that story with my daughter because she just started to date."
Her daughter is now compelled to check both sides of the car in which her date may pick her up in. But given the quality husband Tony is, I wonder if her mother instructed her to see it as a red flag, or as a sign of efficiency or a sign of a deep thinker. Of perhaps just a guy who wanted to save time.
Nonetheless, washing only one side of the car over 40 years ago has become Tony's legacy. The story has passed through three generations now, and I imagine that one day 16 year old Kayley may share the story with her daughter.
A few more generations into the future, the teller of the story will question if it is even true. Another generation will call it apocryphal. If it weren't such a simple story, it may have welcomed some outrageous embellishment.
So long ago, could that simple efficient, or lazy, or hurried, act, --have been imagined as Tony's legacy?
We all leave a legacy whether we like it or not, whether it's planned or not.
One cannot live fully while planning a legacy. One just has to live, and live their best.
If I may borrow a cliché and extend its meaning: may the best man win and may his best legacy follow.
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