Prompt – someone important in your life with whom you’ve lost touch with

 

Lost touch with seems to be an accidental or choice of losing touch, so I’ll stick to live people, although that doesn’t much narrow the list down. Faces assail my mind until one remains: Sylvia.

Oh, how I love Sylvia. Short and plump, coffee colored skin with a head of loose dark curls that she kept short-ish. She had a round face and a flat nose and the voice of angels. She had a way of moving as if she were floating on air or about to dance. Not just a skip in her step, but a hop and a pirouette too. Her voice soft and lilting, but more that brilliant combination of mother, sister, spiritual healer from New Orleans, Louisiana, a place that for me holds the mystical and mysteries and a longing place to try it just once.

Her husband was an NCO, a Staff Sargent, I think in the Marines. She had three kids who were about my age at the time or barely younger.

She used her softness to get her point across. We taught together for the US Navy’s child development program until she became the assistant director, one step down from where she truly belonged. She brought multi-cultural education to a place that should have had it all along considering the clientele. She taught me how to make the perfect sweet potato pie even though my own mother did not understand the concept of Dessert rather than side dish. As an aside, when I was recently in Virginia, McDonald’s had sweet potato pie instead of pumpkin. I’d consider moving south just for that.

Sylvia was encouraging and smart and strong and delicate. She was comfortable in her own skin with a bright smile. She wore loose, bright, colorful clothes and sandals with the most beautiful huge to my eye necklaces, bracelets and earrings. Her rings were simple to fit her small hands.

She inspired and awed me and the thought of her makes me smile.