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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVUmBJt4vXM

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Previously

But even as I had fallen into hopeless sobbing I felt her hand touch my face. The face she had wondered about when we first talked about the woman she had somehow unknowingly married all those years ago.

"In a lifetime"

I remember you-ooh
You're the one who made my dreams come true
A few kisses ago

Mid-80s... At a housewarming for a friend...

It was raining, and I walked into the home. I had the vague feeling that we sometimes get. Had I been here before? Either way, I noticed the festivities had mostly come and gone during my protracted late arrival. Nearly everyone was in the kitchen. Several of the ladies waved but remained with their erstwhile escorts. Even church activities have a certain protocol of sorts, and being single and unattached left me feeling lonely in a house filled with people.

"Hello," her voice came from the archway into the now-empty dining room. I remembered her from her occasional visits to the home of mutual friends.

"Hi," I said but stood back; afraid. She walked over to me and grabbed my hand; leading me to a wide couch in the living room. I wanted to run. The familiar was crashing hard into the new as old memories fought to reassert themselves. She noticed my unease and patted the cushion next to her.

"Are you okay?" She smiled. I wasn't okay. Not back in my real life at that time or in this ethereal rearrangement. I smoothed my skirt and sat down. My skirt? Mid-calf chaste denim? I started to shake slightly.

"Nancy told me you'd been going through a hard time since your break up." It would have felt like a cruel pick-up line but for the sympathetic half-frown.

"I..." A terrific re-imagining of a simply awkward moment, but with even more hesitation than I had remembered. Divorce is perfectly horrible in the narrow context of being an evangelical divorcee. But being estranged would take on a completely new level of awkwardness as she asked/opined...

"Was he...is he?" The implications were already heading in the wrong direction, but in this world they careened headlong into shame.

"Not...not a he." I put my hand to my face.

"Oh..." she began.

"Please? Nobody but Nancy knows. I...Cara and I were together for ten years."

"I had two friends I shared an apartment with... I never asked, but when we all moved on, they moved in." She said it matter-of-factly without a hint of emotion. I kept my hand in front of my face.

"Hey... I have a cousin...he lives in the city. Girls like my roomies? Knowing them helped me realize just how much I still needed to love people." It was almost like a dream. It was a dream but for the very familiar welcoming tears in her eyes. Could they welcome even more?

"I... I know ." She smiled even as those very-same eyes scanned me up and down. My own gaze dropped below; viewing whom or rather what had not changed. She pulled my hand from my face.

"No one told me. I guess some might say God told me, but I suppose it's just how I can figure things out sometimes." The awkwardness was turning to shame. Well, I had asked for this, hadn't I? Going back in time, but now as the person I had imagined myself becoming since I was five? Being Andrea on paper or behind an avatar online is one thing, but going back for a do-over is another thing entirely.

"We... Cara knew. And yes that was part of it, but the truth is I was horrible... too many things in my past steered me into being inflexible out of fear, and she ended up with the brunt of my frustration." I looked up and noticed that everyone in the kitchen was still talking. Even so, I failed in avoiding the tears that flowed down my face. She touched my cheek gently before grabbing both of my hands in hers.

"It's okay, Andrea. really." She rubbed the top of my hands softly with her thumbs.

How did this version of her recall my name?

"I..." I had barely gotten that out when she took my right hand in both of hers. Looking up, she scanned the doorway before nodding an almost 'all-clear" signal. She kissed the palm of my hand. It might at one time in another future have been sensual, but looking into those tear-filled eyes, I beheld in the dream what I had already come to know in real life. That there and the, and in my past, and in my future, somehow I beheld the single-most kindest person I would ever know.

"It's okay... I know this doesn't...." she choked back a sob.

"It's gods way of letting me...letting us pretend what would have been..." She almost chuckled. The dream was so very precious, but somehow this glimpse was enough to recall that, no matter what life Andrea never got a chance to lead, it was this person in front of her who made the life she did live, lead it beautifully.

"I love you," she said; almost incongruous until I realized it wasn't her post-departure self but rather her in 1984.

"Me...me too."

I remember you-ooh
You're the one who said "I love you, too"
Yes, I do, didn'tcha know?

"I'm sorry, but I have to go," A gentle way of leaving; even as she spoke things became hazy and she seemed to be vanishing. And I was vanishing. Once again I began to weep. She touched my face and said at last,

"In a lifetime ."

When my life is through
And the angels ask me to recall
The thrill of it all
Then I will tell them I remember, tell them I remember
Tell them I remember you

Next: Just in Time

I Remember You
words and music by
Victor Schertzinger and Johnny Mercer
as performed by
Doris Day