The Old Lady From the Past…

Sveta was in a hurry today. She had to run to get to her train and that was still a 20 minute run from our flat. I had to walk the dog still, before I got on with my excursions for the day…

Now Boza does not like being left behind by Sveta. But I can not move as fast as I use to because of many injuries from past experiences. Since Boza is on a leash he is limited to my pace. That is OK with him except at the times that Sveta has to run to the train or bus station…

It was during this Boza trying to pull daddy faster times, that Boza and I came upon a very very very old lady…

She was trying to cross the road and was having a bad time of doing that. Boza and I came up beside her and I extended my arm for her to grab. Then we proceeded to cross the road at a snails pace… 🙂

When we got to the other side she looked at me and reached into her pocket. Out of her pocket she pulled a tiny pamphlet that I recognized immediately…

The picture above is the picture on the pamphlet. I have seen it a thousand times in my life. It is from the Watch Tower Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses)…

Now normally I can be a real bear with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They have a bad track record with me in America. I will not go into details but it extends from multiples of issues and the least of those issues is from one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses men trying to force his way into my house thinking that there was only a young lady in the house at the time. That turned out poorly for the guy…

But I regress at this point and lets get back on track to the present…

I took the pamphlet from the old lady and she started to rattle about God and Glory and the Great Name. I looked at her while she was talking and realized that she had to be in her 90’s and getting older by the second…

I looked into her eyes and saw the long ago American that was still hidden down deep inside those eyes…

I then said in English, “How long have you been in Russia?” She hesitated in her rattling about God. I could see the gears turning in her head trying to assimilate what I just said. Then the spark came into her eyes and she said in a ancient cracking voice, “I know you…”

She then almost fell down and I grabbed her by the arm to steady her. She then said something to the effect about how she never thanked me. How that she was never able to thank me because she was debriefed and told to stay quiet. She said that she went home to America after that and decided on staying away from America the rest of her life. She left and never looked back…

The very old lady turned and walked away and never looked back. She was running as fast as her old legs would let her. I could feel her fear of what she knew about me and the past. I did not have time to tell her that life has mellowed me. She was too busy still running again from the past…

I then took Boza and we continued our walk. I turned several times and looked at the escaping Old Lady. I then dredged up memories that I had pushed aside…

Lets have a memory flashback: Once a long time ago. I was in another country. I had come upon a woman around late 50’s year old. She was in a bad place at a very bad time in the history of the American war machine. She was a government employee that had been taken as a hostage. She was not important nor vital and she should have been left to her own accords because she had messed up and gotten herself in a pickle. I ignored direct orders and did what I did best. Besides ignore orders. 🙂 This incident is one of several that shaped my future and thinking’s in life…

To make a very long story short. She was brought back to safety and I never knew what happened to her after that. Until today…

The world has become a small place indeed…

This was the subject of my thinking’s this morning. I then had a flood of memories and the least of which was that I have outlived the age that my dad and his three brothers had lived to. Funny how somethings trigger certain memories. The very old lady from America handing out pamphlets from the Watch Tower publications, took me back to my past and future at the same time…

It seems that I remember someone telling me once that we all run from something. It is just that we all have different way of running from that something. Some drink, some do drugs, some run and some etc. Yes we all do run from something. We just never seem to figure it out. Sometimes I wonder what I am running from?

Now I have a pamphlet that will go into my collection of memories. It will be the thank you, that took thirty years in coming…

God does work in strange ways…

Windows to Russia!
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