My life this summer has felt like a movie. Both magical and weird combined. Last week when I wrote about “time machines” I had no idea I would find one so unexpectedly. One warm perfect summer afternoon I strolled down the sidewalk towards my destination taking it all in when a bold “Hello” startled me. I said hi back and kept on walking. When I returned the same way a while later I stopped at that gate though.
There sat a woman with her snow white fine cotton candy hair spun into a tiny rosette at the back of her head holding a duck. “What’s your duck’s name?” “Alex, with an X.” I asked her how she got the duck which led to her telling me about her husband. They had been married 61 years when he passed away. Elizabeth is 84 but remembers perfectly how she met him. His brother brought him over to meet her and while she ran upstairs to grab something he perused her book shelf. At that point she interjected that, “You can tell a lot about a person by their books.” I wanted to give a hearty amen because I knew I liked her the minute she admonished me on that point. Eventually she invited me in. So there I sat perched in my dress on her front porch with her and the duck all the while clutching my bag on my knees and soaking everything in. I pestered her with questions and she kindly obliged by answering.
She had wonderful things to tell me. Things like how she was married to her husband three months after meeting him because she was madly in love with him. She told me about how her mother had great legs and when I chuckled she said, “Oh no, I mean it! My mother used to model hosiery.” We talked about anything and everything it seemed. Not many people remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but she does. She was born during the Great Depression and remembers that she was 11 when America entered WWII. While she was sitting there we both said hello to everyone that passed us and it tickled me pink to see the astonished and amused looks we received. We were quite a pair.
At one point she asked me if I was religious and I smiled back and said I loved Jesus and had a personal relationship with him. She doesn’t believe in God. We discussed this and I asked her, “What if there is a God?” Our conversation was food for thought.
Eventually I had to leave those steps where we had sat under the leaves and walk back into the real world but I was so thankful for Elizabeth and her willingness to share with me. I walked by a stranger but after sitting with her under the leafy canopy with the summer breeze drifting by I made a new friend. I hope I have many more times of sitting on strangers porches where time passes and you don’t know it because you traveled back in time with them. Stop and say “hello” since you never know what exciting people you might meet outside your door.
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