I don’t know her name, because we couldn’t speak to each other with words. We wandered through a palace in Kyoto, Japan, no continually saw this woman darting between locations, feeling every surface, smelling every plant, laughing, and chatting with anybody near her. I found myself alone with her at a dead end path. She began to converse at me in Japanese. I didn’t understand a word. She pointed to a picture on a brochure of “the dragon staircase”. I points in the directing I had seen it. She gestured that we walk together. We did, she felt the beams of wood, smiled, smelled the surrounding plants, and then gestured we continue. We sat together at a garden and watched the water flow from a small fountain.

We had never spoken anything verbally that either of us could understand, but her youthful energy, curiosity, and wonder were contagious. She had an inclusive presence where you automatically felt like the best of friends.