10-year-old letter

Last Tuesday I was riding my bike to the Good Earth grocery store for lunch.

No, I didn’t run into the lunchtime serenader this time.

For a lot of my bike ride I rode behind this guy who was also on a bike.

He was riding fast.

When I got to Fairfax I picked up the pace and passed him.

He smiled at me as I rode on by.

We ended up at the same place…the Good Earth grocery store.

I got my lunch and sat on the bench.

He came out and sat beside me.

“Hey, I know you,” he said.

I stared at him, thinking ‘Do I know this guy?’

No, I certainly didn’t.

“I don’t know you,” I replied with a smile.

“I met you over 10 years ago. I came to your house. You were living with your boyfriend and had invited some people over to celebrate New Years Eve.  It was the millennium New Year.  I was there with my wife. We are friends of your boyfriend’s friend.”

“I’m so sorry, I still don’t remember you.”

I felt a bit embarrassed.

He smiled. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

We sat eating our lunch and then he turned to me and said, “Say, did you open your card?”

Oh God. I knew exactly what he was talking about when he asked me about the card. That was something I hadn’t forgotten all these years later.

Someone at the party had brought cards for us all to write our intentions, goals and wishes for the next 10 years. We all swore that we wouldn’t open our cards and read what we’d written until 10 years later.

I remembered wondering where to place something that I’d be opening 10 years later? I decided to place it in my ‘documents’ category in my file cabinet.

Throughout the past few years I would find it at various times while searching for my birth certificate or social security card.

Sometimes I would pick up the card and simply stare at it and think back to that day I’d written it.

Life had changed so much since that day.

Good things. Bad things.

Life.

Then I would tuck the card safely back into my documents file.

“No I haven’t opened it yet. Did you cheat and open yours up already?” I asked.

“Already?! We were supposed to open it at the beginning of 2010 or the end of 2009 since we wrote them on New Years Eve 1999.”

“What?! I wrote on mine ‘open on Dec. 31, 2010’.”

“But 10 years from the beginning of 2000 would be the beginning of 2010,” he said.

“Oh. Duh. Of course! You are right,” I replied sheepishly.

“Yeah, Lisa and I opened our cards this year and it was amazing what has come true and it was sad to see what hadn’t. All those wishes that we’d put out there 10 years ago.”

I wondered what wishes hadn’t come true and that had made him sad but I didn’t ask.

I thought about the card that I’d written to myself 10 (now 10 and a half) years ago.

I remembered some of what I’d written that I wanted and I could feel an ache in my heart for what hadn’t yet happened. Then I thought about some of the things that had happened in the last 10 years. Some of the things were things I couldn’t have imagined happening when I wrote the card 10 years ago. That buoyed the ache a bit.

I then wondered what I’d written on the card that I’d forgotten I’d written?

Today I opened my file cabinet:

I went to the ‘documents’ file:

I took out the card:

I briefly thought about opening it. It was 10 and a half years later after all. I was late in opening my card!

But then I thought that perhaps there was a reason that I had mistakenly written “Read Dec. 31, 2010” instead of “Read Dec. 31, 2009”?

Though math is not one of my strong suits I do know what the date is in 10 years.

Perhaps there are some things, some wishes of mine, that have needed 11 years to come to fruition?

Perhaps.

Regardless, I tucked the card back into my documents file.

I’ll open it in 6 months.

Tagged as: 10-year dreams, 10-year-old letter, dreams from 10 years ago, writing 10-year goals