'One man loved the pilgrim soul in you'

A gift from a suitor showed me what I was just beginning to understand about myself

If you’re a horror movie fan, you might know the name Wes Craven. He was a screenwriter and director with a long list of film credits, but he’s best known for classic ‘70s and ‘80s horror films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Last House on the Left, and The Hills Have Eyes. He also directed some episodes of the 1985 remake of Twilight Zone.

I dated Wes for a few months in the early nineties. If you didn’t know his movies or who he was, you’d never guess. He was soft-spoken and unassuming—shy, even. You’d never know he made slasher movies and invented Freddy Krueger.

He had a master’s in writing and philosophy from Johns Hopkins. He was a college humanities professor before he got into the movie business. He was a man of intellect and substance and warmth.  We shared candlelit dinners and deep, quiet conversation in a series of glamorous Hollywood and Beverly Hills restaurants. He was attentive and interesting and asked thoughtful questions.  He was lovely.

For my birthday that year, he gave me a book of W. B. Yeats’ poetry with a note on the flyleaf directing me to a specific page. This was the poem on that page:

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

-William Butler Yeats

I read and loved Yeats in college, and this is one of his most beautiful and moving poems. But reading it now resonated in a different way.

One man loved the pilgrim soul in you.

The poem named the thing I hadn’t yet named in myself. I didn’t yet recognize my own pilgrim soul—my restless spirit, my dreams and desires, my quest for fulfillment and expression. It was his way of letting me know that he saw who I was. He appreciated something in me that I was just starting to discover about myself.

Timing is everything. He was nearly twenty years older than I was. He was divorced and wanted a relationship. I knew he was signaling his interest in me. In hindsight, he was probably exactly the kind of man I was looking for. But I was still in my profoundly restless post-divorce phase. I wasn’t ready for him.

We’re lucky if we meet even one person in life who truly sees us. Wes was one of those people. He understood I was a seeker before I even knew what it meant.

A few years ago I looked him up and saw that he’d married again in 2004. He died of a brain tumor in 2015.

It’s interesting how we come back around in life, and how experience can take on a deeper meaning with time. The book is packed away in storage now, but I thought of Wes again when I came across the poem online a few weeks ago. I remembered that time in my life and my sense of being at a threshold. I remembered his kindness, his romantic gesture, and the significance of his gift. It was a portal, opening the way forward.

Commonplace Book

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

-Martin Buber