The woman who made school miserable for me did not recognize my face

Dear Delyara, I am a pediatric dentist. Today, a mother brought her seven-year-old daughter to me for a broken tooth. I recognized the mother immediately. Her name is Miriam. When we were thirteen, she and two other girls made my life unbearable. They mocked my teeth, my weight, my secondhand shoes, and once locked me in a toilet cubicle during lunch while they told everyone I smelled. I remember her face from that age more clearly than I remember some relatives. She looked at me today and saw only a dentist. She smiled, apologized because her daughter was nervous, and asked if I had children. No recognition. I spent forty minutes comforting her little girl, explaining every instrument, letting her hold the suction tube, stopping whenever she raised her hand. Miriam kept saying, “Thank you for being so gentle with her.” Part of me wanted to say, Do you remember how gentle you were with me? I did not. Her daughter had nothing to do with what happened thirty years ago. When they left, Miriam shook my hand and said she wished every dentist was like me because she had been frightened of dentists since childhood. I almost laughed at the symmetry. Instead, I went into my office and cried. I had imagined seeing her again so many times. In every version, she recognized me. I never imagined the deepest insult would be discovering that the years I spent recovering from what she did may have occupied almost no space in her memory at all.