Sometimes, a touchstone from the past can give us both joy and comfort in the present. 

This past week, I was in Chicago for business.  Afterward, I rode the train from Chicago to Evanston, the town where my alma mater, Northwestern University, is located and where I had additional meetings with clients. 

Walking from the train station through downtown Evanston toward campus, I observed how the buildings and businesses had changed since I was an undergrad, three decades ago.  A hip new highrise had taken the place of a mundane drugstore. A trendy sandwich shop stands where there had once been a diner. While it's good to see things updated and growing, deep down, it's also unsettling. Human beings yearn for the familiar.  It's how we are wired. Photo by pasa47

Gone were the landmarks that I remember–the Marshall Fields department store, where I would buy panty hose or the Kroch and Brentano's bookstore, where I would find Christmas cards and small gifts for friends.

And then I came upon Saville Flowers. With its white facade punctuated by a striped red and white awning, it looked reassuringly familiar.  The outside wasn't slick and in fact, looked a bit worn over the years.  But more importantly, it looked real–a place that had been there for decades and wasn't about to lose its lease next month.

On the door, a handwritten note announced that they had bunches of daffodils for sale.  That was enough to beckon me inside. As I opened the door, I was transported back in time, the scent of flowers wrapped around my head. It was as if I were 18 again, picking up a boutenniere for a date before a formal dance. Photo by antaean.

Inside, it was as I remembered it. The shop was filled with displays of flowers, from Gerber daisies to ones I didn't know the name of but admired.  The cooler for flowers stood in the same place along with the area where customers picked up orders, shelves serving as a writing surface, extended from a column on all sides. The column marked the dividing line between "store" and "back of store" where the employees would emerge from the gray shadows with a customer's order.

A woman in the back came toward me.  I asked about the daffodils and she moved to where they were in the store, mentioning they had just come in.  She reassured me that the tight buds would soon bloom. In the light, I could see her face more clearly and having now heard her speak, I asked, "Have you worked here long?" 

To which she replied, "Oh, yes, I've been here for a long, long time!"

She knew what I was thinking.  "Did you go to school here?"

The next few minutes were a blur of tears and emotion, as we both realized we knew each other from three decades ago, when I was a young co-ed, coming in before a big dance and she was a young daughter working in the family business. I was particularly touched when she said, "Yes, I remember you.  I can see it in your eyes."

I don't remember other shopkeepers in town from my days as an undergrad. But she was different.  She made an impression over the years. Her voice and demeanor had not changed, similar to that of Leave It To Beaver's June Cleaver. She always seemed happy whenever I came into the store and she seemed happy now.

She recounted how she had lived in Spain for a few years, but eventually came back home and together with her sister, bought the business from her parents. She took down a framed newspaper article from the wall, with a photo of her with her sister shortly after becoming the new owners. Yes, it was her. (To the left is a more recent photo of the two sisters.)

She handed me two bunches of daffodils. I paid her.  We hugged.

When I gave the daffodils to my friend and client at Northwestern, I told her the story behind the flowers.  She remarked how it's easy to think of yourself as a twenty-something, even as the years go by.  You can still feel youth, inside your body and mind. 

Next month, I will turn 50 years old, well middle-aged, with my own son starting college in the fall.  I'm grateful to have stepped back in time, not in my dreams or memories, but in a real place that has remained true to its roots, throughout the years.  Thanks a million to Saville Flowers and the sisters who run it.