Recognizing someone from your old life can be such a terrifying experience. Eyes meet, and the past play’s like a movie. Scene after scene rushing forward at top speed. The speed of this recap is so fast, as if all these scenes have been stuffed into a space way too small to contain them. Then there they are, finally seeing the open air. Whatever covered and bound these memories now gets to do what it needs to do.
Maybe it’s just dust covering the movie; now those dust particles finally get to float away. Or it’s a matured cut, and a magnifying glass has been placed over the place where the incision was once fresh. In the ugliest of old paths crossing, it’s the foul smell of pus or gangrene tissue.
Whatever recognition brings into the air, the air helps. Even when it stings or hurts, it always helps. I don’t like sitting in that moment, but I know it’s good for me.
I come back to those eyes, though. Those piercing eyes. Like two sets of keys thrust into the keyhole, in that locked box where you store all your memories. Maybe that’s why reminiscing is so happy yet painful: the lock box to every memory, good and bad, is open and now you are invited to feel everything again.
What happened to you, my dearest? In all the time since we parted, what happened? What did you endure, succeed in, feel fulfilled by? What did you see, hear and do? I won’t have the privilege of being privy to that information, I know that. But please don’t blame me for hoping.
Recalcitrant: to be helplessly stubborn, unresponsive, disobedient. For example, They were recalcitrant, even in the face of the house seniors. Or, the toddler was recalcitrant.
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