佚名/Anonymous
We may look at the world around us, but somehow we manage not to see it until whatever it is we've become accustomed to suddenly disappears. Take, for example, the neatly attired woman I used to see—or look at—on my way to work each morning.
For three years, no matter what the weather, she was always waiting at the bus stop around 8 a.m. On snowy days, she wore heavy boots and a woolen scarf. Summertime brought out neat, belted cotton dresses and a straw hat worn low over her eyeglasses. Clearly a working woman, she exuded an air of competence, stability and dependability.
Of course, I remembered all this only after she vanished. It was then I realized how much I counted on seeing her each morning. You might say I missed her.
Naturally, I had fantasies about her disappearance. Accident? Something worse? Now that she was gone, I felt I had known her.
I began to realize that a significant part of our daily life consists of such encounters with familiar strangers: the power walker you see every afternoon at three o'clock; the woman who regularly walks her Yorke at the crack of dawn; the dapper twin brothers you see at the library.
Such people are important markers in the landscape of our lives. They add weight to our sense of place and belonging.
Think about it. If, while walking to work, we mark where we are by passing a certain building, why should we not mark where we are when we pass a familiar, though unnamed, person?
After all, if part of being a tourist is seeing nothing and no one familiar to you, then can we not say that seeing the familiar jogger or shopper is part of what makes us citizens of our community?
This is one thing an immigrant longs for, I suppose: the sight of the familiar stranger: the shopkeeper who nods to you. The bus driver who drives you to work each day; the woman you see walking her child to school.
Sometimes I wonder: am I a familiar stranger to someone?