Faces Like Lockets.

I’m sitting in Panera, my eyes glancing around, flitting from face to face like a bumblebee bouncing from flower to flower in a field of color. I’m one of the youngest in the room, most being well into the winter of their years. As I look onto the faces of my elders, the lyrics “A world inside us” ring through my ears, and suddenly my eyes are opened. I see the stories in the wrinkles and scars and sunspots around me. I see faces like lockets, heads full of wonderful stories and sentimental photographs that just need to be opened. These people have lived. They have been young and have felt what I feel and have done the things I do. They have walked in my shoes, and the shoes of those older than I, and they have neared the end of their days. I want to sit at each table and ask of them who they are and where they have been. I want so badly to hear their stories, to learn what adventures gave them their scars and what jokes were told to produce such deep laugh-lines. I’d love to hear their tales of loves lost and won, to hear of their first love and their last. I want to learn from them, to hear perspectives on life that have resulted from looking back through the sea of time that drenches their lives. I want to hear them say they’ve been in my shoes. I want them to say they’ve made the same mistakes I have made and have forgiven themselves and have been forgiven. I want them to listen my story and my ideas for where I’m headed, and when I finish talking say, “Kid, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You’ll do just fine.”  I want the telling of our stories and the sharing of our humanity to bridge the gap between our years, or better yet, eliminate it, to make the young ripe with wisdom and the old fresh with joy and inspiration. These are the things I desire, but instead, I’ll sit quietly in my booth typing, and they’ll sit in theirs reading the paper and slowly drinking coffee, and we will grow no closer. I’ll feel too busy with my work and too polite to interrupt their quiet time, and they will enjoy their reading comfortably, probably believing someone of my age wouldn’t want to take the time to listen to their wisdom. And if I sit unmoved, I guess that makes them right.