When I left the office on Thursday evening, I was so tired and the traffic on I-95 was moving so slowly that I decided to stop for coffee. The best coffee place in town is near where I used to live, so I couldn’t resist driving by my old condo. As I headed toward it, my memories of other times were so strong that I felt like I was simultaneously living in three moments: the present, the day the real estate agent first showed me the condo, and the day I sold it. Weird.
At the coffee place, there was a sign on the window about a missing man. I recognized the picture. It was the guy who worked at the local convenience store. I never before knew his name (Sam) or realized that he was one of my neighbors, only that he seemed like a nice guy who worked hard. He’s been missing for a few weeks. My heart goes out to his family and I hope that he is returned to them.
I still wasn’t quite ready to face the traffic, so next I went hunting for my favorite olive oil. It’s unfiltered and it looks sort of gross because there’s a film of olive bits on the bottom of the bottle, but it’s the best olive oil I’ve ever tasted. I haven’t been able to find it around here and I was hoping my old grocery store still carried it. They did!
So it was a weird, sad, triumphant evening. And long. Though the traffic had cleared by the time I hit the road, it still seemed to take forever to get home.