The woman called out to me as I passed her house, rushed down her steps and came to the fence that surrounded her front yard. “I meant to tell you when I saw you the other day: You look good with the white in your (goatee).” I was startled, then pleased; I thanked her, and stepped briskly onto the Pennsy Trail, happier than I had been just moments before.
On Sunday, October 14th, while covering the Heartland Film Festival, I interviewed Cady McClain, the director of the film “Seeing is Believing: Women Direct.” Cady named a woman she knew at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and I told her that I had worked with Chloe Carr’s father. When she asked how I knew EJ Carr, I told Cady that he was one of the photographers who worked on the advertising catalogs I designed for the L.S. Ayres Department Store. Cady was a model and actress and EJ had taken her head shots. At that moment, I felt connected to the larger world in a more intimate way.
My 10-year-old granddaughter has a cellphone. When I get a call from anyone who is not Imani, the ringtone is the same. When Imani calls me, the ringtone is one that I have assigned exclusively to her. It is called, “Twinkle,” and when I hear another person’s cellphone playing “Twinkle,” I look for my phone, delighted that my granddaughter is calling me.
When he was four, my sleepy grandson would ask of me, “Cool Papa, would you rub my back?” Xavion is now 14 years old, and a freshman in high school, and when his mother called me to tell me that I was to be his resource for writing, I felt that my scribblings might have had a greater intention, soon to be realized.
My friend hangs bags of food on my doorknob. The bags used to have containers of spaghetti and other beef-infused dinners, but I have changed my eating habits, and my friend leaves me basics, such as potatoes and onions. It is a startling joy to open my door and hear the rustling of a bag, which swings, heavily, into the entry.
Every weekday morning, my youngest daughter opens the rear door of her car to me, and from her car seat, my youngest granddaughter smiles at me. I sing a “good morning” song to her, swing her from the car and climb the steps into my apartment, singing another song. She grants me smiles, which delight me.
I worked as a clerk at a polling place on November 6th, 2018; a woman stepped up to the table at which I was seated and presented her identification. I sang a few notes to her, and she sang a few notes in response. We sang to each other as I marked her off as a valid voter, and made up a song, which ended with “we should do a duet.” I don’t know the woman, but should she read this here: We should do a duet.
Reader Mike Malast sent me an e-mail with a simple “Amen” to a recent column; I am grateful for his readership.
Comes again, the fourth Thursday of November, the day when we are encouraged to give thanks, though we may all have reasons to despair, issues about which to grumble, discomforts that alter our interactions with each other like a pebble in our shoe. I have all of these in abundance but choose to stitch together the moments of joy into a blanket of gratitude and to sit beneath it in a warm silence of wonder and thankfulness.