A couple of weeks ago, things at the bookstore were winding to a close.  A diminutive man in a baseball cap who had been reading in a chair by the children's section approached the counter. He pointed expansively at pictures in the coffee table book about DC for some time before I realized he was deaf and couldn't talk. He couldn't really read lips, either. But there is a look in person's eyes when you realize you just kind of like them; you're on the same page; you "click". Maybe, for me, I can sense irony in a look and it makes me feel comfortable; like I'm among my own. As much as we'd like to think we get along with everyone, truth is, some people you like when you first meet them, some people you don't.

We instituted a series of scribbled notes. Turns out he was looking for a more recent edition of the book to send to his wife in Sri Lanka. With an economy of words, I ascertained how long he'd been here, what part of Sri Lanka he's from, where his wife has been, how he's a contractor that could fix up the worn carpeting in the store...all that kind of stuff. At a certain point in the silent conversation, he wrote, "You are young and beautiful", pointed to his wedding ring and then me, and questioned thumbs up or thumbs down.  I wrote "My husband thinks so" pointed to my wedding ring, and gave the thumbs up. He gestured embarrassment with some waving and head shaking, then mouthed something about "don't worry" that I didn't quite catch. So he wrote, "Don't worry about me". Message received. It was a casual, what-the-hell, cast-out-a-line flirtation and we moved on to other written and gestured conversation.

I see him in the neighborhood a lot. He's a contractor working on a restaurant remodel. He always shakes my hand and mouths "How are you?" The awkwardness is gone. We're good.

But the piece of paper with "Don't worry about me" sat on my desk for several days after I emptied out my pockets. It seemed to be saying something else. It made me feel sad. Something...just felt icky. I threw it in the recycling but field an untraceable regret as I did.

At my age, it takes a couple of weeks to call up a memory. There is a similar piece of paper in a red-topped plastic tub in my storage space. It says, "Don't freak about me". When my brother was in the ICU at Stanford Hospital ten years ago, he was pulling at his oxygen mask ,so I lifted it up for him. His voice, hoarse from days of intubation, croaked out something I couldn't understand. He tried to pantomime. I finally got "Don't freak." and he nodded. Then he pointed to himself. What? I got the paper and pencil from the rolling table next to his bed and his hands, heavy with IV and the pulse-ox sensor, carved "Don't freak about me" with the pencil. After years of cancer treatments, that hospital stay was his last. He died shortly thereafter. This coming Valentine's Day will mark ten years.

What if all my logical beliefs are wrong? What if there is synchronicity in the universe? What if every ten years I get this same message, in different forms, until I really understand what it means?