Heart-wrenching truth from a nonagenarian

(My mama... young and beautiful, circa 1938)

Full disclosure: For those of you who are not profound introverts, you may not realize that those of us who are need a minute after we leave a store such as Target or Trader Joe's to sit in the car and take a second for a long sigh of relief. (Yes, we are tense and somewhat anxious the entire time we're shopping—too many people, too much sensory overload. Oh, and don't even try to get me to set foot in a Costco.) So when I left TJ's on Thursday, I got in the truck, took a deep breath, started the engine, poked the button that gives me a local NPR station, put the truck in reverse—but didn't back out of the parking space. I took a moment to look around me, to make sure I wasn't about to mow anyone down in my distracted hurry to return to the safety of my home-sweet-home—and that's when I saw the elderly woman sitting in the passenger seat of the SUV parked next to me.

Her body language reminded me so much of my mother when she was in distress—head bowed over her chest, the fingers of one hand splayed across her forehead, as if the pain were mental as well as physical. It wasn't scorchingly hot on Thursday mid-morning, but temps were well into the 80's and rising quickly. With both windows down in the truck, I felt the heat, and I recalled the scene two years ago as I walked out of a pharmacy to find my truck surrounded by police cars and an ambulance. In the car parked next to mine, a man in his twenties had left his elderly grandmother sitting in the heat while he went off to shop. She'd fainted, and he'd called 9-1-1 when he couldn't rouse her. The gathering crowd was hostile when they realized, as the cops questioned him, what he'd done. And rightly so. This woman in the parking lot of Trader Joe's looked to be in distress. I couldn't leave.

Nor could I get out of the truck right away to check on her. Again, full disclosure: For an introvert, interaction with strangers is tremendously challenging (unless the person is in extreme and immediate danger, so yes, no worries, I would jump in the lake or whatever to rescue your loved one even if we'd never met and I would feel severely awkward for a long time afterward). From what I've observed, extroverts have no trouble whatsoever jumping into a conversation with someone they've never met before and asking direct and personal questions. Introverts not only lack this sort of valor, we generally spend a long time before we initiate conversation rehearsing what we're going to say. ("Excuse me... Are you okay?" Is that direct enough? "Excuse me... I don't mean to bother you. But it's a bit warm to be sitting in the car. Are you alright? Is someone coming back for you soon?" Okay, that's too verbose—she could faint by the time I got to the end of my speech.)

See what I mean?

I put the truck in Park, turned off the engine, and sat for a few minutes, willing someone to emerge from Von's or TJ's or wherever, offer profuse apologies to the woman in the car, then leave. Only then would I be able to get the hell home and on with my life. Because I couldn't leave her there, sitting in the heat. But no such relief occurred. We sat, the woman in her car, who occasionally looked up hopefully at the sound of an approaching shopping cart, only to be disappointed, and me in my truck, conflicted about whether I should intervene and angry at myself for being conflicted.

When I couldn't take it anymore, I opened my door and got out.

"Excuse me... " (I had decided to go with the simplest approach) "are you okay?"

The woman's face, dappled with age spots, opened in an enormous smile. "Oh, I'm fine!" she answered, chuckling, adding as a qualifier, "Well, I'm ninety-six." She paused. "Going on a hundred!" She laughed gleefully. Brown hair framed her face. Her short bangs were carefully curled under. I couldn't help thinking of how fastidious my mother had been about her appearance until the day she died.

"Are you sure it's not too hot in the car?" I bravely and directly asked, proud of myself all over the place for breaching the scary wall to make the inquiry. Now that I saw her smile, she was no longer a stranger.

"Oh, no, I'm fine," she said again. "I have a hurt hand." I saw now that she had her right hand resting on a pillow. "My daughter just took me to the dentist." She made the face a child would make about the same experience. "She just ran in to get some things. She'll be right out. She takes good care of me."

Some positive affirmation escaped my lips here. I don't remember what it was. The woman went on talking. Again, I was reminded of my own mom.

"Don't get old." She laughed again. "You know, when your hands don't work, you can't pull your pants up. You can't fasten your brassiere." She held up swollen, arthritic hands. I started to mumble something regarding how much I worry about my own hands, which have already begun to ache and swell, but she continued.

"Stay young and beautiful."

"Well, you look lovely," I told her, omitting the word "still" that makes me cringe every time a younger person uses it in reference to an older person.

"Oh," she said, "well, I still color my hair!" She laughed and nodded toward my silver threads of wisdom. I laughed too, then, and suggested perhaps I might have better luck finding a man if I started coloring mine again.

We talked like old friends after that, about the early onset of gray hair, about finding a good man. We discovered we both have four children, two boys and two girls. She said that all of her children are "wonderful," and I said the same about mine. Her husband died twelve years ago. "I don't know what I'd do without my children," she sighed. "I don't know what I'd do without mine," I said.

We continued to chat about our kids (a brag fest, for sure), and eventually she looked at me and said again, "Well, stay young and beautiful... if you want to be loved." That is what My Daughter the Poet would call a "gut punch." Whew. It nearly winded me with its truth.

I do want to be loved. And so do you.

But I'm just going to conclude this narrative without further comment on that.

I never asked her name. I should have asked her name. An extrovert—bold and young and beautiful—would have asked her name. I just wanted to make sure she wasn't overheating in the car. But I felt like I made a friend, a very wise and sweet friend.

I wished her well and thanked her (yes, I thanked her) for chatting with me. She waved and smiled as I started the truck. Then she turned her head to look hopefully again for the daughter who still hadn't returned.

About my failure to be gracious at the post office

One of my ex-husbands—the sweet, forgiving one—used to tell people (in my defense, mind you) that I had been "raised by wolves." He offered this as an explanation whenever I committed a social faux pas of some kind. He understood that I never intended to be rude, but there were certain lessons in grace and good manners I hadn't learned as a child or young adult, partly because I had to raise myself and partly due to my introversion. Social interaction has always made me feel uncomfortable and inadequate, and these feelings are reinforced every time I fail at responding correctly in social situations.

Friday at the post office was a great example.  After work, I rushed home to pick up my granddaughter's birthday present which needed to be shipped that day in order to get to her before her birthday. That same day, I had received an email from a school in Missouri ordering twenty copies of Tainted Legacy. Since I had to get to the post office anyway, I decided to ship the books as well.

Which is why I ended up staggering into the post office carrying one package containing twenty paperback books and another on top of it containing a Hello Kitty backpack ("Hello Kitty sleeping bag inside!!"). My biceps were fatigued by the time I had negotiated the parking lot and two doors to get to the line, and as I stepped up to what I thought was the end, a petite older woman looked at me and said, "Español?" I didn't hear her the first time, so I leaned closer, said, "Pardon?" and she repeated her question: "Español?" Finally I understood.

"No, I'm sorry," I said, stepping around her and into a line of six people. The sixth person in line was an older man wearing wool slacks and a sweater—on a ninety degree day. He had watched our exchange, and he stepped slightly to the side and faced the others in line.

"Does anyone here speak Spanish?" he asked the group. A voluptuous woman in a tight-fitting dress and sexy shoes stepped out of line.

"I do!" she proclaimed, and the man motioned her over to the woman who needed help. The two women chatted away in Spanish, the older woman asking frequent questions while the sexy woman answered quickly and, seemingly, authoritatively.

The gentleman had saved the day by simply speaking up for the woman who didn't speak English. Why didn't I do that? Why did it not even occur to me?

            And as Sir Galahad was stepping back into his place in line, holding a single envelope in his hand, he noticed my burden of boxes. He stepped to the side again and made a sweeping gesture with the envelope hand.

"You can go ahead of me," he said.

But I declined. "That's okay," I told him, "they aren't that heavy." The truth is, they were heavy, and my arms were already aching, and I still had five people ahead of me. So why couldn't I just graciously accept his offer and allow myself to be the other damsel who gets rescued? I don't know. I just don't know. Part of it is believing on some level that I don't deserve such kind treatment from strangers. Part of it is that accepting help of that nature undermines my badass tomboy persona.

The bottom line, though, is that these were missed opportunities. I could have been the one to find help for the non-English speaker, and I could have accepted the man's kind offer to cut ahead of him in line. In either case, I would have had to be a bit more mindful of the others around me instead of being, as usual, completely absorbed in what I was doing.

This is, I think, the key to being gracious. It's about being mindful always of the others around you, whether they are known to you or whether they are strangers. It's about seeing them and what they need, which requires focusing outward instead of inward. Be patient with me; I'm still learning.