Flashback Friday: Just Pat

Back in October 2021, I was visiting St. Pete, trying to decide whether to let go of my old life and start something new here.
One morning, at the corner of the next block, I met someone who made me slow down and look a little closer.
I wrote about it then, in a short piece called Not So Ordinary.
I didn’t know it would keep unfolding.

Just Pat

The sidewalk buckled a little at the corner, the concrete pushing upward.
Wolfie paused to nose at a patch of sun-baked grass, his leash loose in my fingers.
Ahead, a small woman picked her way across the cracks, steadying herself against her walker, her frame slight against the heavy light.

She smiled at me, her face folding into soft, familiar lines.
"Lovely dog," she said, her voice clipped but kind.
Wolfie stood still, patient, as if he understood.

We traded greetings. She tilted her head, studying me.
"You have an accent," she said.

I smiled. "No, you have an accent."

She laughed—quick and bright. It lifted something between us, easy and light, the way strangers sometimes recognize something they already know.

"Yes, I suppose I do," she said. "I’m English."

The word settled between us, light but sure.
"Whereabouts?" I asked.

"Sussex," she said, shifting her weight. "You?"

"Chesterfield."

A scrap of land stitched between us—far away now, but still holding.

"I'm Pat," she said after a beat. "Just Pat. Very ordinary."

I told her my name, though it didn’t feel like it quite measured up.

She spoke easily. Told me how she’d arrived by ship—flying was far too expensive back then—and how, on her first morning, unsteady with nerves and the strangeness of it all, she stood in line to change money and met a man whose smile steadied her.

She paused, not looking at me.
"It wasn’t love at first sight," she said. "But it didn’t take long."

The sun pressed down.
Wolfie waited at my side, the leash slack between us.
I shifted it in my hand.
"How long were you together?" I asked.

She ran her fingers over the walker’s handle.
"Sixty-five years," she said. "Until he passed. Three years ago."

The numbers hung there, heavier than the heat.

I said something—soft, not enough.
She smiled anyway.
"We had a good life," she said.

Some things hold longer than they should.
Some loves do, too.
Maybe because the people holding them aren’t quite ready to let go.
That line stayed with me. Not in the way a quote does, but in the way a presence lingers.
It wasn’t what she said—it was how sure she seemed when she said it.
Like she was offering something solid to stand on, and not asking anything in return.

It made me wonder how I’d answer, if someone asked the same of me.
I didn’t know yet. But I knew hers had shape, and weight, and someone to miss.

For a moment, everything slowed—the sidewalk, the air between us.
She lifted a hand to shade her eyes.
The skin at her wrist looked almost transparent.

She moved forward, her walker tapping against a broken seam in the pavement.
She caught herself without missing a step.

"Do you walk here every day?" I asked.

"I walk every day," she said. "Not always here."

Wolfie tugged gently.
The day waited, heavy and still.

"I'll keep an eye out for you," I said, meaning it more than I expected.

She smiled, lifting her hand—not quite a wave, just enough to catch the air between us.
"Maybe you will," she said.

I watched her move on, small and steady, until the light folded her up.
And I stood there a while, unsure what had just settled in me.

Some memories fade at the edges.
Others hold their shape, settling in deeper as you change around them.
Pat’s story didn’t try to teach me anything. But it stayed.
And in the time since, I’ve thought often about what it means to arrive somewhere unsteady, and find something—or someone—quietly anchoring you.
She found that in a stranger’s smile.

Wolfie nosed at my knee, ready to go.
We set off, slow at first, following the stitched line of the sidewalk.
I kept half an eye on the corners ahead.
Not sure what I thought I’d find.
Maybe just something that might find me, too—folding itself into the light, like a memory that never quite left the path.