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In a nearby town one sunny day near the end of summer several years ago—sometime before the pandemic, but I don’t think it could have been before 2016—my wife and I attended a crowded outdoor event with my dad and one of my cousins who was visiting from out of state. Out of the blue, a woman who looked somewhat familiar warmly greeted me by name. I cautiously declared that I was happy to see her, and then, so I could introduce her to my companions, I apologetically made a guess at her identity. The guess turned out to be correct.
The woman comfortably chitchatted with Dad and Carol and Cousin Alan while I stood back and tried to figure out why I had not immediately recognized her. We had been in high school together, in fact, and had exchanged letters for a year or so when she went away to college. We had seen each other briefly from time to time over the years since then, most recently about a year before.
The sunny-summer-day chitchat continued comfortably for a few minutes without my participation, and then we parted cordially, and I have not seen or heard of the woman again since that day.
But I have thought of her. In particular, I have recalled that she was wearing on that occasion an unusual blouse. It seemed possibly of Asian design, possibly silk. Its color was a gentle white, but it was, at least in my memory, handsomely ornamented all over with repetitive but not regimented blue elephants, each, I’d say, about the size of a quarter.
I very much wanted to ask, but didn’t think I dared at the time (because of the known or suspected politics of some of the persons present), whether those little blue elephants were purely innocent bystanders, or whether perhaps my schoolmate had intentionally sought to affirm the principles of a major political party. And if the latter, I wondered, why were those shameless little guys blue?
♦
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