We may look at the world around us, but somehow we manage not to see it until whatever we've become used to suddenly disappears. __1 _, for example, the neatly-dressed woman I __2 _ to see -- or look at -- on my way to work each morning.

For three years, no matter __3 _ the weather was like, she was always waiting at the bus stop around 8:00 a.m. On __4 _ days, she wore heavy clothes and a pair of woolen gloves. Summertime __5 _ out neat, belted cotton dresses and a hat pulled low over her sunglasses. __6 _, she was an ordinary working woman. Of course, I __7__ all this only after she was seen no more. It was then that I realized how __8__ I expected to see her each morning. You might say I __9__ her.

"Did she have an accident? Something __10 ?" I thought to myself about her _11 _.  Now that she was gone, I felt I had __12   her. I began to realize that part of our _13 _ life probably includes such chance meetings with familiar _14 _: the milkman you see at dawn, the woman who _15 _ walks her dog along the street every morning, the twin brothers you see at the library. Such people are _16 _ markers in our lives. They add weight to our _17   of place and belonging.

Think about it. _18 _ while walking to work, we mark where we are by _19__ a certain building, why should we not mark where we are when we pass a familiar, though _20 _ person?