One of the other nice things about holidays is if your parents still live in the area near where you grew up or went to school, and some of that community is still intact, you run into people you’ve not seen in eons. I last spoke to Angie… when I was …in high school? I mean, I’d seen her across the room at gatherings around holidays, but she’d bused in to our community for school, so it wasn’t as if I saw her around the neighborhood. This past weekend, thanks to the magic of masks (!!!) I didn’t even recognize her. I recognized her sister – by her glasses, of all things, while Angie was in my graduating class! When I got done shuddering over my social faux pas, I thought about how nice it was to see people from the past out and about at all.
As autumn wanes, it’s something I hope we continue not to take for granted. I’m grateful for people I see only once a year or less, because it reminds me the larger world keeps spinning outside my little circle.
auld lang syne
Acquaintance is old-fashioned,
chatty, gossipy, and ‘quaint.’
It asks about our parents
Numerates its health complaints.
Its sweetness is its saving –
“Takes us back” to days gone by.
We smile a bit, nostalgically,
Before we say goodbye.
Acquaintance stretches outwards,
Anchors to “from whence we came.”
Each soul a link to history,
Tied to our family name.