Time Whispers

I found a business card on my dresser the other day. Someone had given it to me, apparently the person to whom it belonged. According to the car, he is the president/CEO of a bank in a town north of where I live. I flipped the card over to see if I'd written anything on the back. I hadn't. I took it to my desk, typed the name into my browser, clicked "images" and voila! Photo.

I remembered the man. I'd sat next to him on a flight from Orlando to ... somewhere. Not the most recent round of flights I took. Another one. The one before this most recent? I think so. Where had I gone? Grand Rapids, I think. By way of ... somewhere.

Mystery solved. I picked up the card to put it in the box where I keep such things, but found myself pulling it out again, studying it. Odd. I hadn't remembered getting the card until I investigated a little. How many other cards have I received in the course of my career--my life even--that I cannot connect to a person? A conversation? A moment in time?

This doesn't apply to just me. Or someone like me. Someone who flies a lot. Meets a lot of folks. This can happen to anyone.

Today I mopped my kitchen floor. I like using Pine Sol and hot water and so I did. The scent of pine took me back, as it has every single time I've used it over the past 36 years. Back to a large one bedroom apartment with narrow oak floors. Directly across the hall from my front door (marked "B"), stood another front door (marked "A"). Beyond that door lived a young woman named Anita, her husband Philip, and their daughter whose name, naturally, escapes me.

Anita's job kept her working from Tuesday through Saturday. On Sunday the family went to church and spent time together. On Monday, after Philip went to work and the unnamed child went to school, Anita cleaned. Top to bottom, that apartment sparkled.

She used Pine Sol. Though I haven't seen Anita in probably 30 years, Pine Sol reminds me of her.

Sometimes time whispers to us, using business cards or scents. Music. The rustle of leaves or the way they crunch under your feet in the autumn of the year ...

Time whispers. But, I think, we are often so busy ... we miss the brushing against our ear.