exists

by

Overheard In September 2014

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This is usually the monthly post in which I chronicle snippets of conversations I have overheard in the month (last month’s post can he found here). Today my post is going to be about just one conversation. It touched me. It deserved its own post and not to be scattered amongst sillier conversations.

The other day I went to Costco (it seems like every time I go there something profound happens). I had not gotten out much in the month of September due to me being a blubbering mess. But we were quickly running out of paper towels and toilet paper (see blubbering mess). I could live without those. But then we ran out of butter. And things got real. So we made our way to the human zoo.

I sat in the food court while my husband went to purchase our food. I am not going to lie. Part of the reason was to people watch and people listen. I sat down but quickly realized that my back was to the action. I got up and moved so that my back was against the wall and I settled down to watch the people coming in and out of Costco. I like to see what people have in their carts. The carts tell so much more about the person’s story than the person would probably ever tell you themselves. One time we saw a man come out with nothing but Sensodyne Toothpaste and a watermelon (now that is probably a fun story).

“I like to watch the people coming out of Costco, too,” a friendly gravelly voice said to me from my left.

I looked over and the robust elderly man sitting at the table next to me smiled.

“It always scares me to realize that these people could be a jury of my peers,” he continued. I laughed. I had never thought of who would be my jury before. I just assumed I would not get caught never do something to warrant a jury.

We spoke a little bit about that. About the weather. He informed me that he was going to turn eighty one in a few days.

“Eighty one just doesn’t have the same ring to it as eighty does,” he said. “I have been blessed with good health. I would love to live, with a good quality of life, mind you, to see ninety three so that I could watch my oldest great grandson graduate high school. Now wouldn’t that be something?”

It only occurred to me later, as I contemplated this conversation on the way home, that my grandmother also would have turned eighty one this year. I was all ready crying from what will come further down in the conversation, but that realization broke my heart a little more.

He spoke with great pride about his grandson, whom he was meeting later that day, because he was borrowing his truck. Without going into detail, the grandson is following his dream and will be making it a reality later this year.

Then he said, “My wife would have loved to see all of this. She passed away last June. We had been married for fifty eight years.”

My eyes filled with tears at the depth of love I could feel coming from the tremors of his voice.

He proceeded to tell me their love story. They had been happily married. Their home was full of books. “Over a thousand,” he said with pride, “and all of them, hers. Back in our day, women did not continue their education. It was her biggest regret. So, what she did not learn in a school, she taught herself in books. We had books by so many different philosophers. I cannot even pronounce some of their names.”

My husband had joined me at this point in the conversation. The man looked at us and asked if we were married (I had made meatloaf the night before and had forgotten to put my rings back on). We explained that we were and he said, “I hope that you two have the same longevity of love that my wife and I had.”

He continued, “My friend’s wife passed away a month before J. He is all ready dating. I could never date again. I am afraid no one will ever compare to J. She was beautiful, smart… She knew everything. I would never find someone as amazing as her. Would you like to see her picture?”

“Yes, of course,” my husband and I both said.

He fumbled in his wallet. He was grinning wildly at this point. “When you get to be my age, you can carry whatever picture you want in your wallet and nobody can tell you any different. This is the picture I choose to carry around.”

He pulled out a wallet-sized black and white laminated photo probably taken in the 1950s of a young woman in her early twenties. Her blonde hair was piled high atop her head in short curls. Luscious lips grinned into the camera. A voluptuous bosom spilled demurely from a satin dress. She was beautiful. Even though the picture was laminated, it was obviously handled a lot. I held it gingerly in my hands. You learn something every day. On this day I learned that an elderly man had been walking around my town with an old photo laminated in his wallet more cherished than any other possession. And now I was holding it. You learn something everyday and sometimes life gives you a gift. Having someone entrust you with their most sacred item is the biggest gift of all.

I handed the photo back to him.

“She was so beautiful,” I whispered to him through my tears.

We sat and listened to the man’s life story. It was impressive. We spoke to him for over an hour. He talked of buying a leather recliner at Costco when his wife got sick so that he could sleep by her side and be with her at every moment. He has not gone up to the second story in their home in years. There was no need, because his wife could not take the stairs. When she first got sick, he redid the entire downstairs with his best friend who was a contractor. It was a great surprise to his wife and she loved it.

He has continued to sleep in the recliner even after his wife’s passing.

“I do not think I will go back upstairs. I need to redo my bathroom downstairs and put a shower in it. If my friend were still alive, we could do it together.” Then he chuckled, “Of course, I would have to remember that he would be eighty one, too. I am not sure what kind of team we would make.”

I did not get the man’s name. He sat and enjoyed a hot dog. The only thing on the table that he had purchased from the store was a bag filled with prescription medication.

We stood up to say good bye, “come back any time. I have a room here. I’ll be here all week,” joked the man.

I swept him up in a hug. This is rather hard to do to a man much taller than yourself. He felt solid to my body. He felt soft to my soul.

I feel fuller from my meeting with the man. I had no idea that there was love like that in the world. So often you hear the stories of long marriages, but you do not know the quality of the life that they led. But this man and his wife… They had it. They found the magic and they kept it. Alive. Even after death.

We left and my husband whispered in my ear, “I love you that much.”

My heart overflowed. But now my thoughts are filled with an elderly man grieving. Sleeping in a leather recliner. In an empty house. Holding a photo. Taken so long ago.

It is a gift. And I want to share it. Spread the word. True love really exists. Magic really exists. And it can be found at Costco everywhere, if you take the time to listen.

by

The Time I Met A Fairy Tale

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I am about to tell you a tale.

It is up to you to decide what to make of it.

Everything in this story is true.

And for the past seventeen years there have been moments where I have questioned the validity of my memory. Thankfully, it has remained the same after all of these long years. However, it does not make the story any less strange:

When I was nineteen I worked as a hostess at a little steak restaurant in town. The owners were a really cool laid-back couple in their thirties. Every girl that worked in the joint had a crush on the owner. We’ll just call him Derek*. He had long dark wavy hair that caressed the collar of his button-down cowboy shirt (the type of buttons that snap… And unsnap quickly, if you get my drift), a Brad Pitt smile, brown gleaming eyes, the sexiest whisper of a voice, and he wore his jeans well. Sorry for all of the sordid details. I wanted to get the details right for the story’s sake, of course.

Well, actually, Derek had nothing to do with the story, but I thought it would be fun to throw him in. For my your dreams tonight. It will make the story I am telling a little less disturbing.

You’re welcome.

So, there I was. At the hostess counter. The restaurant was extremely busy. The bar was full. We were operating on a short staff. We had an hour and a half wait. And us two hostesses were being swarmed with customers. Hungry customers, who after ten minutes into their hour and a half wait, would be coming up to us demanding to know where they were on the list. This wouldn’t be so bad if just one person did it, but it seemed that many folks parading around under the title of “adult” were terrible at time management.

And would come up every ten minutes to check our magic list. Because time must work differently on it.

This is why we always gave a wait time longer than we expected it to be. And, beside each name, the time we had given them to expect to wait was written.

That’s a little hostess trick I’m givin’ ya. And my second gift in this post.

Again, you’re welcome.

I might have also been slightly irritated that the white crayon I had been whittling with a steak knife had had to be put away to deal with the crowd. And also why today, there is one less whittler and one less crayon sculpture in the world.

This is where my gifts to you end.

Somehow, in the midst of all of this, in through the crowd, stalked a short little old man.

He is the center of our story.

He was as real as you and me.

He had a long white beard. A face full of leathered wrinkles. A large hawk nose. Beady little eyes. And a scowl larger than the whole of his entire body.

He also could not have been taller than five feet. In my memory he was as tall as the bottom of my rib cage, but that seems entirely impossible. And so for you I say, “under five feet.” In my head I say, “as tall as my rib cage.” You may choose to believe whichever you choose. It is just a small part of the story. He was not a “little person” as we know them today. He was just a very short…Very grumpy…Very odd little old imp man.

He came up to the hostess booth and asked me how long the wait would be. I asked him if he was by himself (this is because parties of one are quicker to seat). He was.

I told him his wait would be an hour.

Then I asked him for his name.

And he told me.

And I stared at him.

I asked him again.

And he told me.

And I laughed.

I could not believe it. It was the best joke of the night.

The little old man’s cheeks flushed red with anger. In my memory, he stomped his wee feet. But this is the part I think I might have exaggerated. For this story’s sake, though, we will say he stomped his feet in a mad little rage. He asked me why I was laughing.

And this is what I said, “Your name. Why, that can’t possibly be your name!”

He just stared at me. And stared at me. Until I picked up my pen.

“Okay. How do you spell that?” I inquired. It was at this point I began to suspect he was quite serious. And it was at this point I began to wonder if the air in the restaurant had been drugged.

“R-U-M-P-E-L-S-T-I-L-T-S-K-I-N,” he sharply spelled out, all the while giving me a stare that would have shriveled straw.

“Okay, Rumpelstiltskin. I will call you when your table is ready.”

The little old man stalked off towards the bar.

Our hostess desk continued to be bombarded. And I put the strange man out of my head for a time.

Until his name was the next to he called.

“Rumplestiltskin, your table is ready.”

No answer.

Snickers from the impatient crowd.

Two more times I called his name and two more times there was no answer.

For the last time, I said, “Final call for Rumplestiltskin. Rumplestiltskin, this is your final call.”

I never imagined that those words would be uttered from my lips.

I really never imagined any of the situation would have have occurred to me.

And that it would indeed be not an imagination.

Rumplestiltskin never did answer my call.

Maybe he had heard we had a magic list at that hostess desk and he was disappointed to learn the truth of it.

I think he left, because he was upset that he told me his name.

Either that, or the fact, that I cannot spin straw.

But it is definitely one of those two.

There really is no other explanation.

My having laughed at the poor man being entirely out of the mix.

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* Derek is the only part of this story that is made up. The name, that is. The man, well, he was oh so real.

Sweet dreams.

P.S. This absurd and 100% true account was written for The Daily Post’s Weekly Writing Challenge: Power Of Names.