Serendipity

As I walked through the campus, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of nostalgia and angst. It had been many many years since I had just simply wandered the campus on which I had spent so much of my young adulthood. I felt caught between worlds, between eras and times. It was all so different. I tried to look for what was familiar in the midst of all that was new. Buried behind all the new buildings and landscapes was my past, glimpses of the familiar in the midst of so much that wasn't; forgotten reminants of a life so long ago. As I walked along beautifully sculpted walkways, melancholy began to creep beside me. I was out of place, out of time. All around the new totally obscured the past leaving nothing but ghosts of memories and times that once were, and now forgotten. The new had obscured a part of my life that was a simpler less complicated, a period of innocence and wonder, a time full of hope and possibilities. I sighed heavily and suddenly felt obselete. I thought to myself "Maybe I should just get a coffee."

As I quietly entered the unfamiliar space of the snack shop, resignation weighed upon my soul. I wandered about, got my coffee and got ready to just move on. As I stepped up to pay for my purchase, the cashier was staring at me. I smiled and met her eyes. There was something familiar. Tentatively she asked, "didn't you go here?" She caught herself, "you just look... familiar."

I looked at her again, this time our eyes really connected and the vale of time melted away, almost 30 years worth. I was an undergrad at the time, a relatively shy teenager who often kept to herself. Lilly worked in the old Student Union the other end of campus. In midst of all the newness and waves of students she must have negotiated all those years, she remembered me. In one simple moment, the past had reached out comforted and validated me in a way I could never really explain except that she remembered me...