Groundhog's Day and Other Celebrations

Today is February second, Groundhog’s Day, the supposed predictor of the next six weeks’ weather. It’s also Sandra Wilson’s birthday.

When I was growing-up, Sandra Wilson lived around the corner. Each day for school, she wore a brown headband with blue stars and moons and she had the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. She also wrote with a green-striped fountain pen that flowed peacock-colored ink. She was two years my senior. I thought she was a goddess.

Sandra moved away when I was nine. I haven’t seen or heard from her since her mother’s car pulled away from the curb. But, every February second she pops into my mind, and I think, "Today is Sandra Wilson’s birthday. I wonder where she is."

The older I get, the more important it becomes to ponder the influence people have had in my life and to reach back to embrace them. As the guardian angel Clarence proclaims to George Bailey in the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, “All of our lives touch each other’s lives and when you’re not there, it leaves a terrible hole.” Lives intertwine and destiny changes; no encounter is exempt.

In 1953, my parents bought a house. Daddy had experienced a terrible fall at his place of employment and following the surgery, his settlement money gave him the down payment to make the purchase. It was the first house he or my mother had ever owned. There was a two room apartment in the front of the house which would help make the $50 monthly mortgage payment they owed to Mr. Snodgrass, the former owner, who'd financed it himself. Mr. and Mrs. Mock resided in the front apartment. They were our tenants.

Mr. Mock drove a taxi and Mrs. Mock wore a floral apron and raised robins. When I was barely old enough to walk, she and I would go to a nearby stream and dig worms for her birds. When we returned with our wiggling victims, I’d sit in the sunny bay window and watch as she fed the hungry yellow bobbing mouths, each competing for its share of the nourishment. She helped potty train me and would allow me to crawl into bed with them in the mornings, and listen while Mr. Mock read the funny papers aloud. They moved away when I was three. I never saw them again.

At this stage of my life, as my own daughter is raised and living in a near-by city, I have more time to think. And, for whatever reason, Mr. and Mrs. Mock have come roaring back into my mind. I wish I knew how to get in touch with their children to hear stories about the lives of these two who helped raise me and that I loved.

I always fantasized that I’d run into Steve, my first serious boyfriend - meaning he kissed me instead of just holding my hand - somewhere, maybe at the supermarket by the celery or frozen food, or perhaps at a restaurant as I’d swoop by looking chic, slender and amazingly desirable. He resembled Brad Pitt, with similar luscious, generous lips and drove a red sports car in which he picked me up every morning for class and drove me home each afternoon. We dated until he went away to Vietnam. He served in the infantry.

He came back to our hometown, remote, and addicted to drugs. In my very prim and proper manner, I would not be involved with anyone addicted to drugs, so I went out with others, even as he sat in my living room watching television with my sister. He had a short courtship with another woman and married her. I moved to another city.

He died a couple of years ago. I hadn’t seen him since I was eighteen.

At his visitation, as my sister looked at the photographs displayed of his life, she picked one up of him and me, taken in 1967, at the Missouri State Fair. His wife walked over and said that she’d discovered the picture in his wallet and didn’t know who the woman was with Steve. I am saddened that for forty-years I yearned to see him by the celery and he carried me in his wallet – two old friends who never made peace with our life’s divergence.

People come into our lives to teach us lessons.

I used to think that people were interchangeable and if I became disenchanted with the behaviors of my friends, I could merely look for someone else with whom to spend my time. My life lesson is that individuals are not replaceable. Individuals’ spirits casts their own glow about us that another’s will not. We are forever changed by our encounters – all of our encounters – not just the dramatic ones, but all of them.

I didn’t learn this lesson in time to tell Steve that I was sorry for my hubris, or to hug Mr. and Mrs. Mock again or to tell them that I loved them, but I’m going to Google Sandra Wilson and call her every February second, tell her I thought she was a goddess, and wish her a happy birthday.