So long ago, yet near in memory

   I was driving today from my house to the outside world.  I hadn't gotten very far when I saw something that tore at my heart.  It was the sight of a woman shoveling snow from her walkway.  Her name is Teresa and I believe she's nearing retirement age from her position as a school administrator.
     One of those clarified moments in time struck me, from the time of my high school years.  We, my sister and I and her best friend Sandy had returned from a rooter's bus trip to an away basketball game.  We had been in our kitchen late at night, talking and maybe drinking cocoa,  my parents already having gone to  bed. Sandy left for home.  Dorothy had probably walked her at least part way home, as that was their usual practice, which sometimes extended into a lengthy series of each then walking the other part way home until the mathematics of it overcame them and they would dissolve into hysterical laughter, even at unseemly late hours.  But this was December and there was snow on the ground and lightly falling.  Dorothy had returned and we were still up.  We were never in any hurry to go upstairs to bed.  Who needed sleep back then.
    In a short time, there was a rapping on the living room window, the one nearest the chair where my mother sat in the evenings.  We looked out and saw Sandy, who was excited and laughing. "I've got a baby sister," she yelled through the window.
    In my mind, I still see us as the girls we were then even though that newborn baby girl is now ending her career after a lifetime of work.  Well, bless my soul, what's wrong with me?