Of What May be on the Way This Year

My wife of 70 years and I were munching a bite of lunch at our kitchen table on New Year’s Day when the phone rang. I answered, as I was next to the phone, and a woman asked if Denie Weil was there. I said yes, and put the phone on speaker.

The woman introduced herself: “I am Mary Smith [not her real name] and we went to school together in Atlanta a few years back. I am calling just to say HELLO!”

Denie asked which school the woman meant and, after clarifying, the conversation went back and forth nicely. “Mary” explained that she had no particular reason to call, only that “I wanted to start the new year by reaching out to long forgotten friends to say hello again and reach across time and tide to make the world closer.”

We reciprocated pleasantly and said goodbye after exchanging email addresses.

After I hung up, Denie turned to me and said “I haven’t the faintest idea who that lady is. I only went to that school with 60 girls in my class for one year. But wasn’t that a nice thing to do?”

Then we got an email picture of her with a grandchild.

I said it wasn’t just nice. “Maybe it is fantastic and a sign that the new year will bring us a new world!”