I rode past her on 28th, on my way back to the station from a delivery, and almost crashed into a telephone pole when I turned to stare at her over my shoulder.  I braked and turned around to catch up to her as she kept on walking away from me, unaware of my presence.  She had already disappeared into the crowd by the time I'd started toward her, and even with my outrageously good eyesight, I couldn't pick out her back from the hundreds of pedestrians.

     So I shrugged and moved on.  I've always had an active imagination.

     But there was something about her, something familiar, though I'd never seen her before in my life.  The arch of her eyebrows, the pout of her lip, her nose, her walk, her eyes--I don't know what, but there was *something* there.  Something that I didn't realize I'd noticed until it was too late.  Something just like me.

     It's been a week and I can't get her out of my mind.  Her face keeps popping up, most of the features imagined because I didn't see well enough to remember.  I scan the crowds for her whenever I ride along 28th--and I've been going out of my way to make 28th part of my routes.  I never see her, but I don't want to believe that she was never there.

     Maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see, someone I've never seen and have no way of recognizing, someone I know I never really had and never will have, someone I always secretly wanted to have and know.  A mother.  I must have one--I came from somewhere, didn't I?  And that woman on the street, who I'll probably never see again . . . She was my mother.

                                            [ END ]

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