The other day I bumped into the adult child of a lifelong friend. She did not know me, except in a foggy my-mom-mentioned-you kind of way. Her mother and I have shared history, and a bond that came with no expiration date. Fate has it that my friend and I no longer live withing a hundred miles of one another, so the affection is constrained to chance meetings a few times a year, social media and Christmas cards.
This month a different friend is welcoming a new baby. Before I know the child's name, or weight, or eye color, or even gender I feel a wave of love for him/her. As the baby arrives, adoration comes pouring in like shafts of light when you open the blackout drapes at daybreak.
The funny thing is, the targets of my regard have done nothing to evoke it. Except for being alive. Then again, the babies and parents who have slipped away to higher realms have taken my fondness clinging to them like campfire smoke. Where they live still.
It would be dicey to articulate to the adult child of my childhood companion, or the newborn sleeping at my friend's breast that I do indeed cherish them.
"Your mother tells me you are in grad school! Congratulations! And I love you. What's that? You say you forget who I am?"
As for the infant, words are the wrong language entirely.
The crones turned angels that lean in when I am minding my own business are in the same predicament. Hence the tendency to find other means of delivering the message.
