I saw my dead Great-Grandmother’s face today. I saw it on a lady at the old-fashioned post office in downtown Flagstaff. Small beady eyes set deep into apple cheeks. Thin lips sank into her toothless gums; she had that look of smelling her top lip at all times. She did not speak. Those small, glassy eyes stared forward while her bottom lip opened slightly and closed, opened slightly and closed. How did her gums feel on the velvet of her lips?

I crashed into every memory I have of Hazel Holbrook Lester a.k.a Great-Mom. There aren’t many: the metallic zebra wallpaper in her bathroom under the stairs- the ceiling sloped and it was always cold; the fine crystal sherry glass she gave me at the age of 8– how it fit my little hand so perfectly as I pretended to drink wine at my tea parties with imaginary friends; the smell of mothballs and old skin, iron skillets and pickled beets; the bright polyester pant-suits and shirts hanging in her coat closet; her story about riding across the river to Huntington, West Virginia in a horse-drawn carriage; the one time I recall eating her homemade cornbread and drinking water from the tap; Cousin Heather tattling on me for writing on the wall with a crayon and hiding under the table in the ultimate escape. I remembered these moments in a flash as I stood in line watching a strange woman in the post office gnaw at the lips of my dead Great-Grandmother.

The line was almost out the door; at Christmas time the crowds were anxious to get their brown paper packages in the mail to loved ones in places like St. Petersburg, Florida, where I imagined they would “Christmas” this year in khaki shorts and golf shirts. I found myself in that line kicking snow and ice from my boots, longing for sunshine.

The post office is second only to airports for people-watching. It is the poor man’s chance to travel the minds and lives of strangers. I began to watch those around me, taking in each and every minute detail that had managed to displace me from that moment in my own life.

Great-Mom was at the second window with a man who was probably her son- he didn’t understand what he was supposed to do to get his Christmas packages out.

An abrasive woman several people in front of me caught up with an old friend several people behind me; her voice was loud and I suspect that we all listened inconspicuously. She had moved away a while back but found herself with a job offer that she couldn’t refuse back here in Flagstaff. She and her husband will stop by to see this old friend’s house and daughter, who is already 3 ½ if you can believe it. It is obvious that she does not remember his daughter’s name. I now do not remember her face.

A family had walked in the door only seconds before I had- there were three of them: a medium-height man with light olive skin, black hair and a five-o’clock shadow even at 11:23 a.m., a delicate Asian woman with hair perfectly styled hair, tiny legs in tapered jeans and gold jewelry, and a dark, middle-eastern looking girl with large bright eyes and questions; she was probably four or five. They brought with them about eight or nine packages, all perfectly wrapped in brown paper and carefully addressed with a Sharpie marker.

“Who is Carmen?” the little girl asked.

“Charmin’ Carmen,” both of her parents responded in unison. (Carmen’s the one in St. Petersburg, Florida). The man and woman spoke only to the child and not to each other; had they argued before venturing into the postal madhouse with all of those brown paper packages?

A lone white man with a Cro-Magnon forehead and remarkably meticulous hairstyle stood in front of me. His oddly-placed part created a cranial cross-section. The hair on the lower cranium had been combed straight down; the hair on the upper cranium had been violently brushed forward while it was still wet. A glossy salon product had transformed that upper cranial region into perfect rows of corn destroyed in a crop circle. His short bangs were stalagmites separating the upper-cranial region from his Cro-Magnon forehead. I noticed several small pieces of earwax caught in the cilia of his right ear.

The older woman behind me sucked on a cherry-flavored Hall’s; the smell made me nauseous and angry.

The tall guy behind her had known the woman up front who bestowed upon us her entire life to us in a matter of seconds.

Behind him the line continued, blurry in my memory. I waited in line with all of these people who had a day ahead of them. These people had probably all looked in the mirror this morning with puffed and sleepy eyes while formulating a mental to-do list on this first-of-two-consecutive-days-off. Somewhere in all those lists was this unforeseen moment, time shared with nameless people who love and are loved in return.

Nothing sets me apart from these people; we are a mass, a herd - alike in more ways than we recognize or admit. I noticed things about these people that I identify most with myself. I am annoyed by this revelation, angered at these people for human discrepancies that they cannot control.

Then one by one they disappeared from the moment. I too disappeared from the moment. In the end, crisp mountain air met me at the door and social anxiety abated for a moment.

I walked to my car with a box in my arms. It was nice to see Great-Mom again.