Who Are You?

We went to a potluck today after church. It was a very small group of people who sat around in the lower level of someone's home and chatted over plates heaped high with good food. A young couple sat near Sam and I, and we fell into conversation with them. She is a medical student and he is a grant writer for a large corporation. Sam, ever the chatty, friendly man, shared about his job as a patient representative at the medical center. Somewhere in the conversation he made reference to either speaking Spanish or having a disgruntled patient call him an epithet in Spanish. The girl laughed. Sam asked her about any Spanish connection she may have. In a few minutes, their voices were shrill with excitement as they recognized that their families go way back. The girl's mother and Sam used to live next door to each other in a duplex in East Los Angeles, 50 years ago. He knew her parents when they were dating in college. And then I used to live across the street from them. Her mother is a singer and so am I. There were many days when I could sit in my upstairs apartment over Mr. Cole's garages and hear Lina vocalize across the street in her duplex. As her voice would soar, I often listened to see how high she could go. Hearing her sing in church was a delight.
Now, here was her beautiful daughter. She has her mother's personality and her father's looks. She became an entirely different person, chattering away with Sam, so excited and referring to us as "family." Sam, on the other hand, couldn't wipe the grin off his face. He loves keeping up family and friend relationships.
But what was this? Her husband's uncles used to be students of my father in New York, years ago. After discovering this, it seemed as though we had stumbled upon our long lost family members. Being part of a close knit, small demonimation that is world wide means that anywhere I go, I will find someone that knows someone I know. It is truly a family that we belong to.