We May Never Meet

We May Never Meet

Driving home from a quick store run early Sunday, down a road I’d driven practically every week for the almost forty years at our house. It’s an old street, lots of trees, very pleasant.

Coming the other way, as I rounded a curve, a car turned into a driveway I’d never really noticed before. Because of the trees, I must never have looked there. As I passed, I glanced up the drive. The man had pulled up next to another car, and was walking into a house, hidden from me for all these years.

As I drove on I started thinking about how he was going into a house that he knew, probably to people he knew. Maybe he had groceries, or doughnuts. How he knew who was inside and where all the rooms were, and how long they had lived there. Maybe he was married, maybe they had children. Maybe he was in a band, played the guitar, or the flute or something. Anyway, he knew everything about it all, from there, and about before he lived there. He knew all about himself and his family, and his house, his backyard, every tree, every rock, his neighborhood, his neighbors. I didn’t even know there was a house there until this morning, and I’ve been driving this street every week for almost forty years.

In other words, he knew a whole world of life I didn’t know, and I knew a whole world of life that he didn’t know. And we only lived a couple of miles apart.

Living on a fairly well traveled road myself, leading to the center of our town, he may have passed my house as many times as I passed his. I wonder how many times he’s seen me.

And still, we may never meet.