At the Park

At the Park

“Excuse me, why do you keep looking at me?" Jane asked the young woman at the other end of the bench, somewhat nastily.

“I’m sorry! Please, it’s not you it’s me. Well, it is you... You look like someone I know.”

“Really? And who? Another old lady?”

The young woman laughed. “You’re not that old. In your fifties?”

“None of your business... but yes, fifty four.”

“Hardly old,” the young woman said.

“And you?”

“Twenty seven, that’s not so young.”

“Touché,” said Jane, “so we are not so old, and not so young. Who I look like.”

“My mother.”

“You’re mother? I thought you were going to say some teacher, or someone from your past.”

“Well, my mother is from my past, she died when I was very young.”

“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t, we’re strangers! My name is Ellen, how do you do?”

“I do fine, my name is Jane. How do I look like your mother? You lost her when you were very young?”

“I have a picture. I went into an orphanage at two, the picture is all I had of her. Can I show you?”

“Yes!”

Ellen pulled out a picture that had been pulled out many times over the years. “I always keep it with me.”

Jane looked at the young woman in the picture and started crying.

“What’s wrong!” Ellen asked.

“This is my sister Susan. She ran away when she was eighteen, we never saw her again.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t be. Now I know why she never came back. And now I have you.”

“Me?”

“My niece, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh my!” Ellen started crying.

“Let’s have a good hug and give this ‘family’ a new start!” Jane said, softly.

And two lives were forever changed.