Day two after the election and maybe life is settling back into something routine....Maybe the goings on of my aging parents, hurting siblings, teenage children, et al. are looming a little larger than they did on Tuesday night....I don't know...but I do know that somehow things are different....
Last night I found myself on a moderately crowded BART train coming home from the City (oh, in case you're not out here, on the Bay, that's what "we" call San Francisco). I plopped into a seat next to a woman in her sixties. "How are you tonight?" I asked (conversation I usually make with strangers). She answered in no hurry, with relaxed conviction, "I'm excellent. How are you?" I admit I was somewhat taken aback by her exhilaration and I stammered a little, "Well, you know, I guess I'm excellent too," and we both laughed. Just then a young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty, took a seat opposite us and immediately joined into our conversation. She laughed and said, "I'm great....Obama won..." and she and I together said, "How could we not be great??" And at that, we rose from our seats, as the train pulled out, and high-fived and laughed and did a little hug and dance before returning to our seats on the lurching train.
From that opening, the three of us talked about hope and context and work to be done -- lots of work to be done (which is another good reason why we need eight years, not just four....). The older woman told us that her great grandparents were born in 1860 and they knew slavery and she knew them...and now look where we have come. The younger woman told us she wanted to go to D.C. for the inauguration -- exciting, we told her, but we're too old for that; we'll watch for you on t.v.... One by one, we exited the train at our respective stops and by that time, we were united in the hope of something better to come.
Over a bowl of yogurt and toast this morning, I spoke to family members about their troubles and mine. I told my stepmother about applying for jobs for which I'm under-qualified and over-qualified and for which there are hundreds of similarly situated applicants; she updated me on the health and well-being of my father and step-sister. The problems remain, but in the back of my mind, I'm hoping the context has changed....
Mid-morning found me in downtown Berkeley so that my daughter could sell some books she's outgrown. At the parking meter I inserted the dime I had and then another. I was standing at the machine, somewhat flummoxed about the "error" message that there was a 25 cent minimum and digging in my purse to find more change. Some man, a total stranger, walked up to me and said, "Do you need some money? Do you need some change?" I think I looked at him uncomprehendingly and he smiled broadly, reaching into his pocket for a handful of change, which he then poured into my hand. I was stunned and thankful and took the 46 cents he proffered to ease my parking woes.
What is this?
A world where people talk to each other and care about each other and help each other?
I'm going to persist in answering in the affirmative to all of the above....
2 comments:
143herbertLove this one. I had an interesting situation in Trader Joe's the other day (before the election). We were all doing our "bidness" and then a child's balloon burst. It was JUST like a rifle shot - a couple of us hit the deck (USMC training?) - then when we heard the cry and turned to see the little girl and the limp plastic on the string, we all actually burst out laughing. But I realized at that moment that none of us had been in the "Present" - we were all in the future (traffic getting home, cooking dinner) or in the past (petty work things, bad parking at the store, etc.) All of us (about 8) who had been "together at the yogurt" when it happened kept shopping, but smiled every time we turned down the aisle at each other - I took off my iPod and struck up conversation with a few of them in passing. The little girl had not 1, not 2, but 3 yellow balloons by the time she left. :-)
solitaire, thanks for sharing your story....it is wonderful to hear that all around people are coming together....my mother shared something similar.
we all need -- dare i say, "want," to be more connected to all these other humans with whom we share the community, the country, the planet....
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