Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear - Bonnie Smetts

As I’d said before, you can tell that Randy’s my best friend because she can let me be when I need to. After my time at the Records department, I needed time to let be. Randy had asked how’d it gone and all, but then didn’t press when I didn’t want to tell her what I’d found out. That yes, I got a grandma, and she’s living closer than I really want her to be living to me. If the information on that computer screen was correct. In the Records office, I’d been sent to a computer to do the work but when I’d located the person that’s got to be my grandma, I’d gone back up to the lady at the counter. Are you sure this information is really correct, I’d asked her. She assured me that it was as correct as it could be, baring things like deaths and all. She explained that my momma was probably listed as alive, her death certificate not having been received. But my grandma, now she’s most likely alive, baring that she’d died same time as momma, which isn’t likely.

So now I’m sitting in Randy’s car and we’re going back to Nordeen. Never though I’d really ever want to go home, never thought I’d have that feeling that I had a home, but I couldn’t wait to get to my room and watch the sun go down and the red lights from the diner’s sign come on. I couldn’t wait to sit there in the red night and think. Me and that sign had come together, when the red came on, some how’s it was time to be thinking. I had to look at that box again and take a look at that person who’d be my grandma. Right in the picture, she’d be more like my momma’s age and I wasn’t sure I wanted to see her looking any older. But she sure would be by now. And I have maybe even seen her sometime in my life and not even realized it.

But now I’m just sitting quiet next to Randy, who’s wearing that nice perfume she wears. It’s like being in Hawaii when she wears it, that’s one of the nice things about Randy. That and she never says too much when she knows I got nothing to share. Today my mind is full and as we’re driving along I’m staring at that sign in the side mirror of the new car Randy’s husband’s bought her. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. Seems pretty fitting seeing that my grandma is practically right under my nose somehow, if that computer had given me the information correctly. I’m staring at the mirror and then the side of the road and when Randy asks after a time, you OK honey, I tell her about my grandma.