FARAWAY, SO CLOSE

Ever feel completely untethered to pretty much anything and everything?

And then you make a phone call; a work call you don’t even want to make, because you know it’s not going to benefit your business in any way, but it’s the courteous, the professional thing to do.

After listening to the voice at the other end, there is something in the turn of phrase, the cadence, the dialect, that just sounds like home. I ask:

“Where are you from?”

“Brooklyn.”

“I KNEW it! Me too!”

(NOTE: her dialect becomes noticeably more pronounced after this exchange.)

The woman is in her ‘80’s, so her voice is a time capsule of a certain generation — my parent’s generation (and some of my older cousins) — that I miss so much. She’s the last of eight children (my father was the last of six); she of Portuguese descent (my father, of Greek). My ex-father-in-law was of Portuguese descent and I adored him, thus yet another topic of conversation.

The call eventually ran its course. But for a few minutes, I felt tethered again.

Thank you, stranger.