With most things in my life I don’t like to be late, this especially holds true for work.  If traffic is good I’ll get there about a half an hour early.  It doesn’t happen often but when it does I’m generally greater by the same sight, Ya Ya.   Ya ya is most likely in her seventies and like most people her age, she’s full of piss and vinegar.  She gets her morning errands done probably the same way she’s been doing it for thirty years. Every so often we will talk while i wait to start work, usually about what day it is and what street we are on.  Until this week she was just one of the many characters in my life story, disconnected removed, like many other people in our lives.

I see so many people thought the days, weeks years and every so. Often they connect to each other.  In march I went out with my brother in law and Tom to get a few beers at a bar.  We had the most wonderful waitress, attentive, smart, fun, she even took turns busting our chops as we did with her. We connected a little over previous relationships and history, just enough that I’d remember her and she’d remember me.  I left that night thinking nothing of it, that it was just a normal evening for me.
On Wednesday night I called Eric and asked him to get a beer.  Eric is good at many things, one thing he excels at is grabbing a beer with you.  He is always willing and ready.  I got the bar before him and looked around at the servers, not noticing the one I had in march and sat down.  I was greeted by a lovely waitress who instantly struck up a conversation with me.  We talked for a bit as Eric arrived and got settled.
As Eric’s and I evening wound down I found myself talking more to the waitress.  We talked about everything from what we did for fun, music, goals and family.  She told me all about her grandmother and how she lived by herself and she was so wonderful to be with.  It was very evident that her grandmother was very important to her.
We talked about where I worked and it instantly clicked.  It was as if I could see the strings connecting her to me to her grandmother to her mother and out ward.  YaYa was her grandmother, this woman I had seen once a week was the same person she was just telling me about.  In great detail I quickly described her grandmother to her, in that instant her face lit up, the connection had been made.  We joked for a while about it and it ended with me saying I would probably see her tomorrow now that we had met.
That very next morning I got to work early just to see if she was there, and as it would happen, no she wasn’t.  I started work and thought about the two of them as the day went on.  Life can’t be like a movie sometimes can it?  And just then I saw YaYa walking in front of our shop.  I dropped everything I was working on and ran out, I had to tell her I met her granddaughter because I told the waitress I would.  YaYa I called out, the name struck her instantly, as she turned around excitedly.  I quickly told her who I was and that I was a friend of her granddaughters.
The people I meet day to day may seem disconnected and separate. The truth is they aren’t. This experience serves as a reminder that everything is connected to everything in some way.  There is an unseen force that binds us all together.  Who would have thought that two people far removed in my life are  so close in theirs.
I am reminded of an old Indian saying, ” We are forever known by the tracks we leave.”  Each person I meet along my journey will impact me and I them.  These tracks we leave on each other can either bring us closer together in this huge world or push us farther apart.  For me personally I’d much rather have more interactions with wonderful people then less.  This serves as a reminder that you never know who your talking to until a connection has been made.  All these connections make up our personal world and affect our lives.  The only thing is whether I fill them with good connections or bad ones.