There are times when you can walk into a room and continue a conversation after a week, year or decade absence and it simultaneously feels like you were always there and yet there is a freshness in the meeting.

At the Toronto Gift Show, I had a chance to reconnect with Robert Dohany and talk about the rate of change in the tableware business. Now that in itself would be a good conversation, but the first time I listened to Robert talk about the changes in the industry was in 1984. So we have some history of brief periodic connection followed by instantaneous connection.

In Calgary I ran into Addison at a meeting and we shared story as if we had not been separated.

In Kingston I sat with Dennis and Jenny under a tree in a yard on a warm afternoon and the connection was one that bridged years. Conversations about children, jobs and gardens bridged the chronological gap, but the starting point was always that “knowing”.

I picked up the phone yesterday and chatted with a friend in the hospital and we went from pain to laughter in a shared instant.

The photograph that heads this entry has three faces. Robert and I are clearly older, but the image of Stephan Conran makes the point. In all my connections with people they have moved into the direction of enlarging rings like pebbles in a pond. They have also had this uncanny ability to bring stories full circle and complete broken chapters.

I met Terrance Conran about the time he just finished publishing the “Kitchen Book” and now thirty years later meeting his son and watching him launch a new line of kitchen accessories brought the connection full circle.  Yes, my daughter and her partner might bring a few innovative accessories into Zocalo only because they are a better mouse trap.

This journey has been one of seeing the next generation carrying their vision to the streets of dreams with idealism and determination. Whether a new line of gadgets, a renewed house, a healing body or a recovery meeting the old connections are the foundation for a new kingdom to come.   I took the opportunity to make this journey to attempt to circumnavigate the continent.  I was not looking for a north-west passage and already have found that time is the passage from past to present.  From doing to being!