When people ask me about the first thing I remember, I have an easy answer. My family acquired a cat when I was 2, and I remember going to get her. She was hiding under the bed and I remember peeking beneath it and spotting her, small and frightened. I remember sitting with the cat in the back of our VW Beetle on the way home, with the smell of skunk in the air.
The people who gave us the cat were close to my parents when my father was stationed in Pensacola FL. Their apartment was right by ours, and we spent a lot of time together. I was very small at the time and so I do not remember life in Pensacola, but I remember my parents talking about Alan and Ellen. After we moved to New Orleans they were transferred to Hawaii (necessitating the new home for their cat), and my parents lost touch with them after that.
Today someone left two unexpected messages on my office phone. It was Alan, trying to get in touch with my dad. "I doubt you'll remember us," he said, "because you were just a little thing." I sent his contact information to my dad, who called him immediately. A little while later, I called him too.
"I do remember you!" I said. "And I wanted to tell you that your cat lived a long life. I took her with me when I moved to my first apartment, and she lived to be almost 21 years old."
Alan and Ellen wanted to chat a little. They are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, and they have been going through old photo albums. They've been reminiscing about the people they used to know, and they wanted to see if they could track my parents down, to get reconnected and to share these old pictures with them. (I have not shared the one in which I am seated on my little potty, holding tightly to the cat. I sure did love that cat. She might have appreciated a little less togetherness in that moment.) They googled me and found my faculty page right away. (I publish as Jamie Most-Gladly; the number of Jamie Mosts in the world is very small.) "That's our Jamie!" Ellen said, and Alan picked up the phone.
It's strange and sweet to think of someone I scarcely remember looking at a current picture of me and exclaiming "That's our Jamie!" It makes me a little wistful, thinking about the webs of invisible connections all around us, and how quickly the years go by.
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