Today, I inch away from the rock-hard avocados toward the organic pitted fruit, already out of season and just out of reach, and the berries, to try to get a better look at Michael, to confirm that it’s actually him. It is. I’d know his teeth anywhere. I watch him while he looks intently at his phone—maybe at a text, maybe at a shopping list—maybe at an email from his wife—until his shopping cart finally starts to move.

“Excuse me,” he says, staring at me like I have a bird on my head. It takes me a few seconds to realize that my cart is blocking his way past me.

“I’m so sorry!” I smile expectantly but don’t move. I’m waiting for him to recognize me, to say something awkward and adorable and perfect, something we will brag about in the retelling of this moment at the small but intimate rehearsal dinner before our small but intimate wedding exactly a year or two from now. But when my fantasy scenario doesn’t materialize, I realize suddenly what I must look like to him: just another middle-aged female warehouse shopper, oblivious to everyone around her because she feels like she’s invisible anyway. I clear my throat, then force myself to break through the scrim of intense discomfort. “I’m sure you don’t remember me”—I clear my throat again—“but are you Michael Wasserman? From Temple Shalom Hebrew School?” And then, before he can answer that no, he doesn’t remember me, I preempt the possibility of disappointment by blurting: “I’m Judy Vogel. I broke your Ten Commandments diorama. By accident.”

He smiles slowly, cautiously. It’s all coming back to him now, I’m sure of it, and we will each live better, less burdened lives once this painful memory is cleared up and we each get the closure we so deserve. Such is the magic of living where you grew up, I think: the opportunities for soul-cleansing do-overs are endless. “I am Michael Wasserman,” he says, “but I have no memory of a Passover diorama.”

“Oh wow. Okay. Great. What a relief!” I lie. I feel oddly disappointed. How is it possible for that incident to have meant more to me as the destroyer than it had to him as the destroyed? That’s not how it’s supposed to work, is it? “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought of that day and felt terrible about it. I had this whole awful scenario in my head about how a neighbor had helped you with the project because your mother had just died and your father was too busy being in mourning.”

When my mouth finally stops moving I reach down into the sling for self-comfort. But I remember that, for once, I’ve left the dog at home. Which must be why I’m saying things I shouldn’t be saying. And why I’ve insisted on reintroducing myself to someone I used to know, even though Gary’s been advising me against that kind of thing for years: They’re strangers, he’d say after each humiliating episode in a restaurant, a mall, or a movie theater, when someone either didn’t recognize me, didn’t remember me after I’d explained our connection, or didn’t care.