Remembering Strangers

Lysander woke at six in the morning. His sleep schedule was still off. Normally, he slept in till noon or even later, but lately, he’d been waking up at six. The other day he had woken up at four and, almost instinctively, gone to the garden and begun harvesting for winter. His neighbor, whatshisname, had woken up a bit later and came outside to enjoy his coffee on the wrap-around porch. When he saw Lysander gardening he’d shouted over,

“A little early, isn’t it?”

“Must be ready for winter if we want to survive!” Lysander had robotically shouted back, “Cassius’s grain failed last winter, we don’t want to end up like him,”

“Who?” Whatshisname asked,

“What?” Lysander turned toward his neighbor and regained his function, like a camera coming in to focus, “Oh, good morning, Ned,”

“Who’s crop failed?” Ned asked,

“Nothing, nobody, just remembering one of my lectures from the University,” Lysander dismissed him,

“You’re retired, Lysander!” Ned laughed, “You should act like it! Take a walk on the beach, go golfing, tend to your garden, get antiquity out of your head for a few days, you’ve earned it,”

Lysander stared off toward the beach, it was a hot summer day, why had he been gathering crops for winter? Who was Lysander? Was that his name? Shaking the fog from his head, Lysander took Ned’s suggestion, packed a day bag, and walked toward the ocean. He had always adored the sea. The smell of the ocean, the salt in the air, the sound of the seagulls, the fishing ships bobbing in the distance, the women diving for clams to fry in clay pots and snails to grind up into dyes. No. That was wrong. This was a public beach, there were no divers looking for snails, where had Lysander seen that before?

As he walked across the boardwalk, children walking left and right glued to their phones, Lysander shook his head as the fog rolled back in, trying to recall where he had seen divers looking for snails before. He sat on a bench, facing the ocean, with his back toward a large Ferris wheel. He remembered when they’d first invented the Ferris wheel, waiting eagerly in line in Chicago, way back in 1893. Closing his eyes, he smelled the funnel cake, heard the sounds of bystanders pointing and smiling at the Ferris wheel, eager to get close to this wonder of the world, only, it never ended up being much more than a ride. But to Lysander, the Ferris wheel was the most incredible thing he had ever seen, nobody in his time would have imagined such a contraption could possibly exist. Not his mother, his father, his siblings, or even… no. That couldn’t be right either, that was over one hundred years ago, why did he think he had been there? He must have read about it recently and forgotten.

Opening his eyes, Lysander once again locked his gaze onto the crashing waves of the shimmering ocean, trying to remember his first quandary, where had the image of women diving for snails come from and why was it so vibrant in his mind? He thought for a long while, he saw a woman in his mind, wrapped in white cloth, shedding her garments and stepping into the warm sea while he watched on the beach. Her hair was tied up with string to keep out of the way and a large basket floated beside her, tethered to the sea floor, as she dove, deeper and deeper into the piercing blue water.

He remembered how she had spent what felt like ages beneath the waves, coming up to deposit her catch in the basket before diving once again. The water was like blue crystals on her olive skin. The image was so clear. She returned to shore, draping her white robes around herself, hoisting the basket in one arm and Lysander in the other, that’s right, he was barely a child when this had happened, who was this woman? She carried him into the marketplace, open air, filled with people dressed in white and brown robes, all shouting, smiling, haggling and trading. His mother sold the snails to Kallipides. His mother! The woman in the vision was his mother. What was her name? It had been so long since…

Lysander’s thought was interrupted by the metallic sound of a steel drum floating through the air. He looked around for the source of the music. The one thing he loved about living so long was watching how music evolved and changed over the centuries, or, more accurately, how it did not. Music, though its instruments and styles changed, always stayed the same at its core. Music was always about telling stories, weaving a tapestry, it was his through line throughout history.

His eyes caught on a flagpole, as they wandered, waving a large banner of a nation he didn’t recognize. Flags changed constantly over the years, Lysander simply could not keep up with which ones where which. Why bother? They’d change in another hundred years and he’d have to learn them all over again. None of them ever stayed very long. How many flags had he seen in his travels? How many countries had he been to? Lysander had been all over the world, there were hundreds of countries even today, how many had there been when he was still young? Did any of them still exist? When did countries even start calling themselves countries? When did they all get so big?

Lysander’s country had been a single city by the beach, he was sure that the one he was in now, with its stars and stripes, was much bigger than that, but who knew by how much? It was all becoming overwhelming, it was too much to focus on, so Lysander shut his eyes and searched for another memory. Why had he moved so many times? He wondered if the house he was born in still existed, though he doubted it. Houses today were made of metal and concrete, his house was a brick hut with a straw roof that had to be rebuilt whenever it stormed. 

In defeat, he opened his eyes and scanned the crowd. He saw people buying from vendors, using their phones to purchase with a single tap. What ever happened to coins? Or trading? Lysander wondered if he had a phone, he was sure that he did, it was somewhere in his home. He wondered too if he could purchase things with it. Money had always been so easy before, it changed shape and color over the centuries, but it was always money. Now people pay for things with plastic cards and tapping.

He saw children running around, the smaller ones playing games, the older ones on their phones. Lysander had always heard people complain about “kids these days”, but he never liked to. For as far back as he could remember, the older generations had always complained about the younger, it was part of progress, part of growing pains, it was how people evolved… he wondered if he had stopped evolving, when he had stopped growing and changing. It had to have been ages ago now, centuries, millennia even. Why did he live such a long time? He couldn’t remember anymore if it had been a punishment or a reward. Though it didn’t matter now. It had probably bothered him at first, living on while those he loved perished around him, watching grandchild after grandchild have their own grandchildren and great grandchildren who all were born, lived on, and died.

Once, long ago, Lysander had tried to remember all of their names, he tried to keep track of his growing, branching family tree. He had tried to write it all down, but eventually he’d forgotten the language he’d written it in and had to start over. Soon after, the list grew too large, the tree too distant, everyone became a stranger to him as he watched from afar. He’d had to settle for picking one line of descendants to keep watch over. He had chosen the second born child of… oh, what was her name? Lysander balled his fist and slammed his leg for forgetting. 

“I’m sure I wrote it down somewhere…” 

He’d pick the second born child of every descendant of her, unless they’d only had one child, then he followed that one, and if that one died without heirs, he would jump back a generation and start over until there weren’t any left. Then he would break out his notes, trace his way all the way back to a common link, and start over. There had been movie stars, monarchs, farmers, peasants, slaves, and kings. Soldiers, poets, lawyers, athletes, drunks, criminals, he remembered one who had jumped from an airplane with a large bag of money and another who had run for congress. 

Lysander never had favorites, he never judged them for anything they did or didn’t do, he was simply observing, watching his family, his descendants, curious to see what they did with the life he had given them. Some died poor, surrounded by friends and family, others died wealthy, alone, with only their gold, but all of them lived. All of them were born, grew old, and died. Something Lysander had stopped doing long ago. And, even if he couldn’t remember their names, Lysander loved them all.

Oh! Lysander’s gaze shot over to a man with a t-shirt and shorts, buying an ice cream cone for his son, who sat on his mother’s shoulders. That’s why I came to this town, he remembered. The man looked back at him and smiled. He handed the ice cream to his son and excused himself before walking over and having a seat next to Lysander. Lysander studied him as he reached out his hand for a handshake.

“Have we met before?” Lysander asked, seeing his graying reflection in the man’s glasses,

“Yes, actually,” The man chuckled, “I took your classics class, it must have been fifteen years ago now,”

“So recent,” Lysander smiled,

“Recent?” The man rubbed his balding head, “It feels like a lifetime ago,”

“What’s your name?” Lysander asked, “My memory isn’t what it used to be, forgive me,”

“Nicholas,” He said, “Papadakis,”

“Oh, you’re Greek!” Lysander perked up, “I’m Greek! I think…”

“I wanted to come and say hi,”

“I appreciate it, I’ve had a lot of students over the years, I don’t know how many have come to say hi to me before,” 

“Well, I enjoyed your class,”

“That puts you in the few and far between,” Lysander laughed, he remembered a girl in the 1930s who had thrown chalk at him for failing her on a test, was she one of his? He couldn’t remember,

“You made the material come alive, like you had lived it. You made it feel like the ancients were actual people with lives and stories, not just notes on a page. I was enthralled by your lectures,”

“You became an anthropologist,” Lysander remembered, “You did a dig in Greece!”

“Yes, I did,” Nicholas smiled, “I’m shocked you heard about that, it was such a small project,”

“I made sure to keep track of the students who responded well to my lectures, how was it? You found something, didn’t you?”

“A tablet,” Nicholas nodded, “Written in Linear B and then ancient Greek, Latin, old English, Etruscan, German, Chinese, dozens of languages, most of them ancient. It had been continuously updated for centuries by different authors and it was a list of-”

“Names,” Lysander stared out into the ocean, “It was a list of names,”

“Yeah, it was. It’s like a modern Rosetta stone, it’ll help scientists and linguists decipher a lot of text in the future,” Nicholas turned toward the ocean and stared into the water, “I wonder what it was for, if it was a ledger, or some kind of notebook, maybe a list of kings?”

“Or family members,” Lysander said,

“Yeah?”

“Maybe it was a family trying their best to keep track of each other as their small world got bigger,”

“Maybe,” Nicholas nodded, “I’d never thought of that before, I always assumed it was a list of strangers,”

“Strangers can be family,” Lysander looked toward Nicholas’s son, who sat on his mother’s lap with his ice cream in hand, “Something you learn from the classics is that we all come from the same place, we all share the same story. People are born, live, and then die. But they all have friends, family, hopes, dreams, personalities, flaws. People think if we traveled back in time a thousand years that everything would be so different, but it wouldn’t be. The languages, the flags, the clothes, those would be different, but not the people. There would still be games, stories, jokes, swear words and slang. Politics, war, family picnics, weddings, and funerals. And if we traveled forward a thousand years it would be the same there too. People buying treats for their children on a hot summer day,”

Nicholas nodded intently as he listened,

“That’s the trick, Nicholas,” Lysander turned to him, “That’s the trick to making the past feel so real, it’s remembering everything that has stayed the same, not everything that’s different,”

“Thank you,” Nicholas looked at his son, “That’s insightful, I’m happy I stopped to say hi,”

“I am too,” Lysander smiled as Nicholas got up,

“It was very nice to see you again, Professor,” 

“And you as well, tell your son to enjoy his ice cream,”

“I will,” Nicholas walked away and Lysander watched after him. He always loved watching what his family became and he was excited to see who Nicholas’s son would grow up to be, even if he couldn’t remember his name.