Strangers

When Zoe was little we had given my parents a set of grandparent memoir journals. I had completely forgotten about them until they arrived completed last week with her birthday gift. It was a really a nice gesture on their part because opening up emotionally is not something they are usually comfortable with. I hope someday when she’s older and curious about “her people” she will sit down and be moved by them. They wrote things that despite 18 years of living under their roof I did not know..........and some entries that sounded all to familiar. Still it got me thinking about all of the strangers in my life. Larry, who I’ve only known only about half of my years on this earth, I feel permanently bonded with. Zoe too. They aren’t strangers. Probably the person I’m next closest too is my sister. I come from a large family, most of whom I would no longer recognize if we were face to face.

About ten years ago while living in Kansas my dad’s brother became critically ill while vacationing not far from us. He was hospitilized and required an immediate triple bypass which was successful, and thankfully he’s alive and healthy today. Before that I hadn’t seen him in years and was shocked to walk into the hospital to see the spitting image of my dad looking pale and uncomfortable, fresh out of surgery. I had spent practically every Sunday evening of my childhood with this man and yet had never known how much he looked like my father. Physically, they’re almost identical. Later that week, my cousin Billy came in from Michigan to make the flight home with my Uncle. I would never have known him on my own. But a couple of days later while driving to the airport together I was listening to him talk and I recognized him. Not as the older teenage cousin who’d I’d last seen 18 years earlier, or as the balding physics professor he was that day. What I recognized was myself in him. It was surreal to hear how much alike we were in some ways; affirming for me that we humans are in large part a product of our genes. I haven’t seen or talked to Bill(y) since. I may never talk to him again for all I know. Like most people that have touched my life, he’s a stranger.

I have an old friend who collects people. She ravenously hoards them, seeking out their friendship as if she’s working her way through all of humanity’s population in hopes of eliminating strangers all together. Someday she may well know everyone. I’m not like that. I “know” few people. There are people I have “known” for 20 years. But I don’t know their names. There’s the older lady with all of the great hats who I wave to every day on the way to the post office. There’s Freckles and the friendly man who walks him. I wave to them every day too. There’s the woman who checked my groceries out this morning who made me smile when she asked if I was ready for Halloween. I responded “Yes, but I’m even more ready for next Tuesday to be over.” “Oh” she inquired “What’s happening next Tuesday?” I could go on and on. I have stranger relatives, stranger neighbors, and stranger friends. And then their are all of you. The irony is that perhaps we share as much, if not more, with each other through technology than people I’ve known my whole life. I like that too.