Chat Room

"Hi!" the woman I met pushing the grocery cart smiled broadly and waved her hand in a friendly gesture. I said hello back, but I had no idea who the elderly lady was.  Someone I'd met at church or somewhere, I reasoned.

"How do I know you?" I smiled and asked as she stopped her cart and seemed to want to chat.  She wasn't sure, but said we looked so familiar.  Turns out she was from Blackwell, where we grew up. Then she said she was 93!

"93!" I exclaimed, "You're doing so well!  Do you drive?"  She said she didn't, so I assumed someone brought her to the store.  On hearing the word, Blackwell, my husband soon had her engaged in conversation about people she might have known there.  When she told us her last name, he looked thoughtful, then brightened as he recalled the name, but it was her uncle.

We kept running into the talkative lady throughout the store, as she exchanged tidbits, looking backward at us as she walked.  Finally, we were in the same check-out lane.  Howard whispered to me, "I think her uncle was a bootlegger!" to which I responded, "Don't say that to her!"

Then I heard him ask her, "Was your uncle fond of the 'the recipe?'" She didn't get his drift, and he whispered, "Did he bootleg?"  She looked confused, but her daughter in front of her chimed in, "Yes, and her daddy went to jail for that!"

As they checked out, her mother turned to us and said conspiratorially, "Those were the good old days!"

We had to laugh at her spunk and good humor.  She had already told us of a long career in real estate, saying how surprised she was to get the job with only a 7th grade education (which was probably actually equal to high school or college by today's standards!).

People had been friendly all day, including the young woman who was coming in as we were going out of the store.  I stopped and waited for her to enter, but she insisted, "No, you go first."  Then there was the cheerful employee walking by who called out "Have a great day!" as we were leaving.

We had stopped at a Texas supermarket as we neared our son's house on our trip over the weekend.  I needed the makings for a special salad I was making for the family reunion we would attend the next day.  I had seen the recipe in a magazine, and besides the main ingredient of broccoli, it called for raisins or dried cranberries (I used "Craisins"), sunflower seeds, vinegar, and other items hard to find in a strange store.  But the employees and even strangers were so cordial and helpful in pointing them out.

Then at the reunion, stories and events from different points of view were enjoyed and laughed over, as well as things I had never heard before or only vaguely remembered.  As I thought about this later, it occurred to me how wonderful it will be in heaven to meet loved ones and those we have never met, to get to know them and all the wonderful people of history and the Bible that have lived for God and made heaven.  It will take an eternity for that.  (Or maybe we will know them instantly in that new dimension, for the Bible says we will know as we are known!)

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to  face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."  I Corinthians 13:12.