I saw an old friend today. He was crossing at the railroad tracks while I was out for a morning walk. Thing is, I didn’t recognize who he was until he had passed and moved on. And that saddened me.
Along a path near a park, I noticed a couple walking toward me from the opposite direction. They were holding hands. I thought that so sweet. As they moved closer, the eyes of the woman met mine and there was a moment of recognition. I believed I had seen her somewhere, that I had met those eyes before.
The woman said hello, and I did the same. Neither of us wore a mask, as restrictions for the pandemic had eased somewhat. The man walking with her, also without a mask and whose hand she had been holding, did not acknowledge me. He, in fact, never looked my way, taking small and deliberate steps, remaining a bit hunched, his eyes toward the ground, his entire being tucked inside, as if he had found comfort in his inwardness. I could not see his face. I continued walking as they did, and attempted to place the woman. Where had I seen her before? Some seventy-five yards from where we had crossed paths, I remembered. She is the wife of an old friend. The friend and I had worked together as journalists many years ago, a man with which I had collaborated, with whom I had played hundreds of rounds of golf. I looked back along the path. They were turning through a grove of trees now, and I could see only their backs as they moved on. I wanted to call out, to call his name. But I didn’t. It had been so long. I’m not sure he would have recognized me after all those years. And with his presence so tightly pulled inward, his body language so restricted, I wondered if he would have welcomed my hello. I stood for a moment and watched them. How long had it been? He looks so old. So much had changed.
The other day, for the first time in nearly a year, I hugged someone who had not been in my immediate circle. We had both been immunized and it had become safer to show such affection. But yet, in that gesture remained hesitation. That hug, and this encounter with the old friend, had been altered, maybe forever, by what the world has had to endure. We have changed, and maybe changed so profoundly that we now must discover a new normal, one that may never again be what we once had.
I continued my walk along the path, and at the sidewalk was a small mulched area with a swing set and monkey bars. On the far side of the play area, I could hear giggling—the sweet, joyous laughter of a young girl. I turned the path and saw her spinning in the grass, making herself dizzy, her wild red hair tossing from side to side, laughing through it all, a laughter heard despite the bright blue mask around her mouth and nose. It was clear the pandemic was the last thing on her mind, far from everything in her world, a child’s world that we all believe had been interrupted. What has she missed? So much. What friend has she not talked to? What hug has she not been able to give? But, in her inherent innocence, the little girl appeared to have no true idea of what she had been without. Whatever the void was in her young life, it had been determined by us, the adults, by what we have experienced in our lives through the lens of our own youth. For her, life was simply what it was right then. Nothing more and nothing less.
I walked the sidewalk not far from the girl, smiling, hearing hope in her laughter, hope that we might find our way to something new and better. And beyond the play area, over the small hill where the path moved toward the far east side of the park, I looked one more time for my old friend. The big trees blocked my view, but no matter, I was sure he was out of sight, certain he was gone.
Photo by Craig Vodnik