"Anniversary Song"

This song reminds me a lot of 'Sunrise, Sunset' from Fiddler on the Roof. Both in three, both with similar harmonies, both with bittersweet lyrics. Maybe it's like the Da Vinci Code, all sorts of profound inner meanings and connections. I'll be the grand discover of this. Shhh. Don't tell anyone.

The other day I received an odd package from a friend. This friend is someone that I haven't seen in years, but I have known her a long time, since we were about twelve, or so. We were close all through high school and into college, and she was in my wedding party for the current marriage, but since then we've barely spoken. Things seem basically congenial, though, and I'm hopeful that we will reconnect at some point. She did send me a card for my birthday this year, which was lovely to receive. Then I got this package, and assumed that it was some kind of gift. I even felt a little embarassed, considering that.

It wasn't a gift. It was a box full of old sewing patterns, and a book that I had given her as a gift, years ago now. I'm guessing that she forgot and thought that the book had been a loan as well. The patterns are very dated eighties-wear, and I'm going to file them away in my vast pattern stash. At some point I'll have an eighties party and be so very set. I enjoyed the faint nostalgia of looking through them.

There was no note in with the package, and I have to imagine some cleaning of an basement, or attic that uncovered these things. I go through this myself, so I am unabashedly projecting here: it's the need to clear things to the baseline, to return all those things that belong elsewhere, and at least in my case, to magically call back home all the things that I have lent out over the years. I wish I could even remember where my things all went. I do feel that I would acheive a deep peace if even briefly everything could be back in its place, back where it belongs.

Because I am not the anal housekeeper that some of my friends are, this will never happen. I still yearn, now and again. The package from my friend feels like a gift anyway in this context, since it gave me, all unasked for, a little piece of that dream.