Yesterday was

When people were old, they looked old, they smelled old. They spoke of old things and of days and time before. They started with “remember when we…” The music playing on my grandmother’s small radio in the kitchen was soft without words. The big band sounds on the old station. It was FM radio, clear and crisp. In between someone came on to say something about the song and they whispered what the song was and what the next one would be. I remember the sounds of the window being open and the cars driving by.

In my grandmother’s house, we could hear cars driving over a metal grate on a bridge. It was musical. It was like eeeeeee owwwwwwwwwww ehhhhhh as they passed every one made a sound. The air would come in from the Hutchinson River and when the river was moving, the smell of fresh water would run up the side of the building and even on the 13th floor, you could get the sense of being right on the water. When people were old, they would come into the house, and they talked about things I didn’t understand. Some of them complained about the others. Some of them spoke highly of the others. What is it that shaped me from this pebble? This fraction of a second of time in my life. Who were we? We went to a bungalow colony they called it. We went there to spend time with family. People wanted to be together, to laugh and to cry, to make fun of each other and tell stories. I didn’t know why I was there and sometimes I’d want to leave. I didn’t want to be around them, they were loud. They cooked up food and played music, they laughed and told stories about yesterday. They were there together until time and work took away the energy to meet up. The years took hold of them and they started to get older. They complained more about each other, they spent less time together. They argued about their differences. They stopped seeing each other altogether. A younger me was happy about that. I didn’t want to see them anymore; they were old and annoying.

Now they are all gone and yesterday I was younger. I can see how being older, we would want to spend time with each other. We would value our time together and we can talk about the old days. The kids have better things to do than hang out with us. They have places to go, things to see, phones to dive into. We are more separate than ever and now, I can’t possibly be annoyed by anyone because there is no one to annoy me.

I miss the rock on the window from Israel that smelled like metal and the conversations in background about this or that. You never know what you had until you don’t have it.

Enjoy the day.