Lace Blouse: Forever21.
Red High Waisted Shorts: Thrifted.
Bunny Flats: Giveaway win from Le Bunny Bleu.
Headband: Found it.
Lipstick in MAC's 'Russian Red.'
I saw the old man yesterday when I pulled in the driveway with my 2004 red beetle, moon roof down and music throbbing through the speakers. The one we always ran into every summer when we would go on our summer evening walks.
I would always complain because I was lazy, making up a half hearted excuse it was too hot out. But you would pull me out the front door into the haze of the impending twilight with the promise we would go to McDonald's afterwards. Persuading me with food like a dog. The nights were always so balmy, so beautiful. I wouldn't take them for granted now. We would walk along the sidewalks of the neighborhood and talk. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes they were serious talks and sometimes we couldn't stop laughing. We were always avoiding people and walking onto the other side of the street just to escape awkward 'hellos' and 'how are yous.' You were always more antisocial than you let on, maybe a part of me rubbed off onto you. But there was an old man who hobbled around the quiet houses and freshly manicured lawns with his wooden cane.
He was old, but not too old. African-American with a little bit of a beard that was mostly gray. He wore a base ball cap and always held a toothpick in the crook of his mouth. Sometimes he would walk with an older woman who we assumed was his wife. When we didn't see her with him, we would hold our breaths and hope that she hadn't passed because we cared about this old man. Why, I don't know. We just did. He was so kind with the most sparkling eyes and he would always greet us with such endearment, the two kids he had been seeing walk around the neighborhood at the same time he did for the past five summers. He didn't know our names. He didn't know our ages. But he knew us. And for some reason, I didn't know how much he meant to me until I saw him yesterday for the first time since last summer.
Because I had forgotten about all of these little things up until that moment that he gave that same wave he always did and that same, 'how you doing young lady?' It brought me back instantly, almost scarily. Nostalgia taking over my entire body and mind. And then in that moment he looked at me with that same smile he used to give the both of us I sent a silent prayer to God that he wouldn't ask me about you.
Because now it's just me.
With much love, Lauren.
