Kristine

I stood at the register and looked across the counter at the customer I was serving. My boss was at the register just to my left, standing attentive should the person in line be ready to place their order. It had been an off morning, in a string of off months, in what felt like an endless summersaulting day.

“Can I have your name for the order?” I asked the woman on the other side of the counter.

“Christine.” She answered. And I smiled as I typed it into the register. I could feel my boss get close and peer over my shoulder while I typed it in. Her name, also Christine.

C-H-R-I- and as I typed my boss laughed. “You’re spelling it correctly!” She said.

It has been an ongoing banter between us, in that I’m also a Kristine, only spelled differently. When people at work call for me and my boss in the same breathe it’s reminiscent of my mother letting me know I was in trouble by pulling out the middle name. “Emma…Christine….!” And I envision my mother with her hands on her hips, “Emma Kristine, get over hear right now!”

Everything is reminiscent of something. I’m four decades into this life, and everything reminds me of something else. Four decades of life filed neatly away in drawers I dare pull out and look at, as sometimes they render me motionless.

I’ve been daydreaming again, like I haven’t in a long while.

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