Where you been?  OK, I’ll correct my grammar for the grummerians out there (I know it’s grammarians).  Where have you been?

Who am I talking about?  I’m talking about you – those people who I don’t really know but who I feel I know because I read their blogs; those people who are my "friends" on certain social networking sites (like shelfari.com) those people whose faces are familiar from my commutes (including the bus drivers); those people who were clerks at my favorite lunch spot or pharmacy; people like my mail man.

Where have you been?  I miss you.  I miss your smile – in the case of the driver of the #202 bus who is young and efficient and courteous and a fine specimen of maleness (a little eye candy who made me smile whenever I saw him, besides, I was going to find out if he was single so I could try to introduce him to a lovely young woman I know). 

I miss your words – the poet whose inspiration has taken a hike, the photographer who seems to have stopped finding images to capture, and the deli-guy who knows just how I like the sub that I only have every two weeks or so these days in these days of frugality.

I miss y’all.  You are part of my world and when you disappear without a word I want to know where you’ve gone and what you’re been doing.  That’s nosy of me because in most cases, except for a few bloggers I don’t really know you that well.  What I really want to know is that wherever you’ve gone, you’re doing fine.

I miss my walking crew.  The weather has changed. It’s cold and dark in the morning which makes it easier to put off walking.  The fall season is a demanding one for women on a mission to do all the things we do – volunteer, agitate, participate, work and manage relationships.  I miss youse guys.

I miss places – Filene’s Basement.  The real, original basement.  Dot-2-Dot Café – are  you really closed?  So soon?  I supported you as much as I could and told a whole lot of people about you.  (I’ve walked by three times in the last two weeks, emailed and called and not found you open nor a note of explanation on the door.)

I miss tastes – what I wouldn’t give for a White Castle cheeseburger now.  (I don’t eat hamburgers but maybe once or twice, okay three times tops, a year – mostly turkey burgers are on the menu now – but this particular craving wants satisfaction.)  And the fried donuts from that place whose name I don’t remember in St. Louis.

Tastes and places, I can get over, replacing them with new tastes and different places.  But these unique people are sure hard to let go of because you  form the fabric of my life – a kind of security blanket.  Don’t go disappearing on me without leaving a note of some kind, something like “Gone fishing.  Be back soon.”  If I know you’re coming back, I can be more patient and feel less of a loss of the familiar.