Ellen

Ellen. That’s what I call the woman I don’t know. Not that she looks like any Ellen I do know But she looks like one I should know.

That’s the problem. I am cursed with uncanny visual memory, the polar opposite of facial blindness. It’s an obsession—a clear and vivid perception that persists despite efforts to ignore it. I can perseverate for hours until I make the connection between a face in the crowd and how I know it.

For instance, I lingered an entire evening on one young man’s face. It was an outdoor concert on a village green, yet I knew him from TV—an actor or an anchor? No, I deduced after a few hours, he was an extra in a documentary. I kept scrolling until an answer jumped out at me. He was on TV all right—an extra in a documentary, for sure. He was a guest at a party a friend had videotaped, a recording I had watched several times. I walked over and introduced myself.

On another occasion, I followed an older man out of a neighborhood restaurant. “I know you,” I practically accosted him as a means of an introduction. We played 20 questions—or maybe it was 50—until we landed upon a mutual friend we had gone hiking with several years prior to this encounter.

The relief of identification is palpable. But not so with Ellen. I have fixated on her for nearly 25 years. She’d probably be creeped out if she knew that. To this day, she nibbles around the periphery of my memory, anchored forever in the Mister Mister Tent at the New Orleans JazzFest.

There she stands prayerfully as if reborn—chin high, eyes closed, palms open to the heavens—breathing deep the drizzle that revitalizes the wilted masses from the poaching heat of spicy gumbo, sizzling music, and sultry weather. Amen, I sigh in shared reprieve. Giggling children splash in the puddles around her feet. They are probably hers, but she looks too free to be a mom. I want her to be my mom. I want to be born into such unfettered bliss.

Mundane and Mediterranean, she’s exotic in a limp sort of way. Wearing a white sleeveless scoop-neck jersey, khaki shorts, and sandals, she sways unpretentiously to festive cacophonies. Strapped around her lanky waist is a fanny pack that dances around curvy hips. A colorfully banded sunhat cascades down her back, ribbon-tethered to an angular neck. Leveling her head, she tosses it, spraying droplets as a dog might. Oblivious to a few strands of gray glinting in cropped black curls, she opens joyful brown eyes that connect momentarily with mine. She flashes straight squarish teeth in a wide handsome smile that lifts her strong nose and small ears. I return the smile, for I too revel in this oasis.

But then I frown, all relief evaporating into the fog. She’s gone. Yet I know her from somewhere. But where? Art gallery? Wedding? Fundraiser? My mind flips through its situational rolodex trying to codify her existence somewhere—anywhere. But to no avail. I struggle with frustration.

Sometimes I actually forget about her. For weeks, even years. Then without forewarning, she creeps in from the margins on little cat feet, as Carl Sandburg would say. And boom. I’m tortured anew.

So I call her Ellen, an Old English name that means bright, shining light. I quiet my curse’s demands and assign her context. She is the anonymous Jazzfester who gavottes on the shores of my memory bank, the mysterious Madonna of Mister Mister fame, the unburdened woman whose burdens I do not need to know.