Sentimental well wishes

[dismallyoriented]

Sometimes there are influential old people in your life, or even just old people who were around as a passing fixture of your life because they were fellow members of your community. A good several of mine were teachers - the old Chinese man who taught me violin since 5th grade and hosted student recitals in his backyard, the Russian woman who taught me piano and did her damndest to teach expressive body language when I didn't understand why it mattered or how to feel it in my performance, the other old Chinese man who ran an art class at my local Chinese school and gave me unexpected gender and life goals. They're important parts of your life but only for as long as you're doing the thing that keeps you in contact. And then you quit, or get a different teacher, or graduate and move away, and you leave each other's orbits. You look at the calendar year and remember how long ago it was when you knew them, and you don't know exactly how old they were when you were last together but you can sure do the math on the odds of life expectancy.

I have no way of knowing if these people are still alive, or how their lives are going. For some of them, I'm not sure I deserve that information, in the sense that we were only tangentially connected and a next door neighbor who you never really talked to Isn't the kind of relationship you get intimate life details for. But the fondness is still there, the well wishes are still there. Even if I don't know that anyone is there to receive them anymore.