The thing I like about living in a smallish city, in a smallish neighborhood, is bumping into people I know. It's an obvious but powerful reinforcer of my sense of community and belonging here. It makes me feel at home.

It takes some time, though, to increase one's number of acquaintances to the critical mass required to bump into someone different, say, once a week. Now, six years since I returned to the metropolitan Washington area from the not-so-metropolitan Charlotte, NC, area, I've attained that level.

I bump into high school friends, like Ellen, who lives a life parallel to my own: works in Bethesda, takes photography classes at the Smithsonian, has attended yoga classes at the same studio. Sipping a Caffreys at Biddy Mulligans one Friday after work, I spy photo club member Paul, although it takes me a minute to recognize him out of the darkroom context.

Walking to lunch with coworkers, I am spotted by Jamie, whose parents are still friends with my parents, who took me to see Crocodile Dundee when I was 15 and first allowed to ride alone in a car with a boy. I catch up with my former coworker Don and his wife Margaret at a friend's yard sale. I cross paths with my neighbor, Fernando, while I'm biking back from the grocery store. Our waiter at Tono Sushi is the younger brother and the spitting image of Josh, who I worked with three years ago.

In the garden, I hear a woman introduce herself as Simmons, and how many women named Simmons do you know? It can only be the one I went to college with. She is eight months pregnant and lives in a condo up the street from me.

By email on Friday, I learn that a high school classmate -- whose name I do not recognize -- has "past away" in his apartment, in my neighborhood.

I can't leave out the people I see on my way to the Metro every morning, and home in the afternoon. Some of these people live elsewhere (where?) and apparently work in Adams Morgan: the man who may have gone to college wih me; the small, wiry guy who cultivates a nerd-chic look with bow ties and thick-rimmed glasses. Some of them live in Adams Morgan and work in Bethesda, like me: The tall woman with the tattoo on her ankle and a novel in her hand; the thin dark-haired young woman with the jean jacket, sexy-librarian glasses and Diesel bag. Nameless, but they're part of my tribe now.