I met Honey one morning quite un-expectantly while searching the downtown for a cup of coffee. As I remember, the morning was cool and dark; one of those near-winter mornings reminding us snow is on its way and will collide with our schedules for months to come. Secretly I must tell you, I first saw Honey a few weeks before as she sat knitting away in a comfortable lounger in my favorite coffee shop.
Honey. Let’s see, if I had to describe her I would say she was an older gal in her sixties crowned with a stylish felt cap with a pair of glasses slid down her nose to see the working edge of her knitting. So, she had a studious look to her – a loner’s gaze - but still she faced the crowds as if to say, “…I dare you to say hello.” Personally, I think she rather likes people but she says it quietly – the way a lioness smiles before she crunches on old bones.
I think I did say, “…hello,” that first night but we are not talking about first nights, are we?. We are talking about early mornings – one specific early morning when she caught me completely off guard. As I remember her walker was pushed to the table like a servant and as she moved her coat and scarf aside, she placed two cameras on the table.
“I’ve been to see the Pope,” she announced,”…I’ve been to Rome and it doesn’t look near as bad as I thought it would look.”
I’ve never been much for the Pope but I love a good Roman story as much as the next heathen so I set my coffee down at her table and shuffled into the booth to see what I could see.
As I looked through the photographs I could tell she was slightly uncomfortable in my company. After all, I was a new face pushed too close to her and she knew it. It was more in how her eyes moved, how they shifted to and from my face too quickly as if not to get caught up in details. It was not a great fear but it was fear, the slight apprehension of someone new intruding in a world somewhat old. We all do it – and this fear must be pushed aside if we want our world to grow. Honey did just fine for as she settled into her explanations of the Castle of Angels and the foods she tried and cafes she visited I saw her eyes rest calmly on my face and mine soon rested calmly on hers and we became friends.
People are not so scary really. I wonder why I constantly forget this. And here I am preaching, I the one who should sit in the back row because I know less than nothing. However, my lack of knowledge has never stopped me before so why should it today.
So, I will continue. We are not surrounded by strangers so much as we are surrounded by mothers and daughters and fathers and sons. (My heart taught me this, a blasted muttering fool with no sense whatsoever.) We are surrounded by what we have always been surrounded by – our friends and our loved ones, our family – only these ones have new names and new faces and new experiences.
I met Honey that morning – and although she is not my mother she is my mother. I’ve met so many people the last while, so many I wonder how I will remember their names – but they are not names, they are stories of life framed by nervous eyes and a quiet demeanor. And then they settle down into friendship. They can be disarmed with a simple question of, “How was your day?” or by asking their name. And suddenly they are talking to us and we are talking to them and the world grows a little more vivid with each word.
Damn it. I am leaving now.
I turn and look around. Why am I typing alone at a table in the market when there are a thousand more mothers to meet and a million more sisters to care for and a hundred brothers to find. Fathers are beyond count and mostly bald and fat - but who cares?
I am off to seize the day. Beware. I am coming for you….
How was your day? I just thought I would ask.
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