Sara

Today was a day where everybody called out my name, and yet no one did.

"Sara" I turned instinctively at the sound of my name. I knew it could not have been for me, the bright little girl voice, calling to the friend she had spotted, amongst the sea of bobbled hats and fall weight jackets. She was standing on the painted postbox red steps of a brownstone, near her front door, clasping her Mothers hand, her wheat colored hair blowing in the wind, her cheeks rosy with cold.

I was walking my first-grade boy, to school. He was blissfully intent on picking up as many chamois yellow leaves as he could, holding them together in both hands, like a corsage, too large for any buttonhole. "They are for my art teacher," he said, his big brown eyes, serious.

Autumn was a lackadaisical lover, fading away like the first dreams of the night, long since muffled in layers of fresh thoughts and REM sleep, ever relegated to obscurity, except as a vague sigh of something just out of sight.
Winter's indrawn breath sucked the foliage dry and brittle. The yellow and brown leaves had turned sharp and flitted to earth as drifting projectiles, twisting into orderly whirlwinds like music notes in a well-worn song book.

As the breeze eddied and swirled around trees and buildings, I watched him walk into the building, his sweet face upturned as he turned and smiled to a classmate.

Walking back to my apartment took just a few minutes. In that time, I passed two European women holding court on the sidewalk, laughing and conversing in warm, husky voices, and there it was again, a guttural, drawn out Sarrra, Sarrra and I walked a little slower for a minute.

It was PTA today for the middle school. There we sat, various eclectic parents, waiting on plastic chairs, for our turn to talk to the teachers. The middle-schoolers themselves, presided over sign up sheets, where you had to sign your name and then wait until you were called. It was fairly chaotic. I am sure it would have all been better choreographed to music.
It was outside language arts, where I heard my name being called, only it wasn't. As I turned my head, I could see a boy tapping a girl named Sara on the shoulder.

Dusk falls so early once the clock changes, it is almost like having daylight stolen from under your feet, like a comfortable rug, which belongs next to the bed, disappearing overnight.
I was walking Dovi home, and he was asking for a drink, a snack, anything...and I was asking him to wait until we got home, when she called out "Sara", and I turned my head. A woman in a striped woolen hat was calling to her friend across the street, waving madly... She was the kind of woman I might one day have as a friend...but not yet...

I knew each time that it was not for me, but the weight of the name carried over to where I stood, and I turned my head to see... but it was not for me...




Records indicate that at least 402,155 girls have been named Sara since 1880 in the United States.
http://www.babynameshub.com/baby-names-girls/Sara.html