Gestures That Matter

A Chance Encounter Reminds Us to be Kinder in 2024, Even if We Don’t Know it’ll Make a Difference

“Get a Room in a Hotel” by Devo Cutler | Credit: Devo Cutler

There are a lot of bizarre and confusing emotions when your anniversary falls on December 31^st — the same day as your little sister’s birthday and New Year’s Eve.

Good news — your accountant-fiancé saved $6,000 in taxes by rushing to the altar by midnight. From bended knee to elopement, it unfolded within 48 hours.

Bad news — your little sister’s plane engine failed, and she missed your wedding. She arrived too late to hand off the “something blue,” but in time to hand over the blue garter with a smile on her face, saying “Oh Well,” her standard response to unfortunate mishaps.

Throughout my married life “Oh Well,” worked better than “Yes, Dear” for a small fraction of everything that can go wrong, or in a state of flux — bad, good, and future unknowns.

Instead of a big wedding, our rehearsal dinner was at Tito’s Tacos. We booked a closet-sized chapel, where a doddy minister read our least favorite poet, our vows were personal poems, and we promised ourselves we’d travel and find other good ways to use the money we saved on a “formal wedding.” There were a lot of “Oh Wells,” that day. Five grandkids later, it all seems to make sense.

On our anniversaries we traveled to see Cockatoos in Costa Rica, and in Australia we played the didgeridoo and got chased by kangaroos, making good on our promise to travel.

For our fifth anniversary, we wanted to stay home and have a celebratory family evening for New Year’s and my sister’s birthday. The truth was, my husband had been diagnosed with a fatal blood platelet disorder – three or 23 years was the uncertain prognosis.

We did not tell the family why we had canceled our travel plans and preferred a family meet-up. We spent the 31^st with my sisters joining us at our favorite, family-run East Indian restaurant, but there was a pall over the evening from my hubby’s diagnosis, and our Dad had recently passed away.

When we arrived, we did not notice a man in a wheelchair, barely able to avoid the rain under a small tent-like awning.

I’d left my sister’s surprise cupcake in the car and ran to get it when I saw the man, drenched in the downpour. I thought, what a crap way for any human to go into a new year.

Back inside, I could only pick at my warm chicken saag. I kept looking outside at the guy in the wheelchair who was still getting rained on.

I excused myself and went out the front door, stood under the awning, looked to the small parking lot, and I prayed — for me — and for God to protect me from lice, fleas, contagious body odor, or whatever I might encounter from the guy. Umbrella in hand, I approached him and sort of held it protectively over the both of us. After a moment of silence, sheepishly I said, “Hi, how ya doing tonight?” knowing full well it was flippant and insensitive — and all I could think to say.

Not missing a beat of the “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” muzak wafting out into the parking lot, he said, “What do you think?” His voice was deep like a singer, not snarky or confrontational. I waited, for what I do not know. A sign? A thunderclap… an idea.

The man finally continued, “You’re right about that. I don’t really care; this is gonna be my last night on earth.”

“Oh,” I said, “That sounds not good,” trying to buy time. But you can’t really buy time in moments like that. I knew whatever I said would fall short.

I looked inside at my family. Some of them were now standing, and they had started to sing. This is what we do even though we’re in a restaurant. My stepchildren are always embarrassed, but we can’t help ourselves. We break out into song — everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Scottish lullabies. Music was a part of my life always, and often my saving grace.

“Would you like a hug?” I said — Oh Gawd, I did not just say that. “But would you?” And again, I prayed to God to protect me from whatever I might catch hugging someone who had apparently not had a shower in a while — except for the rain, I reminded myself. Hopefully, this would not be a “rain-wreck.”

I bent down and hugged him.

The man, I could tell was large as he hugged me back. A military tattoo peeked out from under the sleeve in his worn coat. And then it struck me — I needed to sing. “Would you like to sing with me – ‘Amazing Grace?’ You know it right?” Oy vey, I thought, another blunderbuss comment. Of course, he knows it.

People are flawed. We say a lot of mindless things. Nonetheless, you search for the right words, so you do not have to vacate the premises after a faux pas.

In the downpour we sang: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” His face, chiseled by time and life’s grime, made it hard to distinguish tears from rain or suffering from joy, the rain falling on our faces felt like tears.

There are times in your life when you know — even though you don’t know — that you might make a difference. And despite not knowing a hundred percent if you’re going to make a difference, you do it anyway.

You smile at someone who looks grumpy.

You pick up the tab for the couple searching for money in their wallet at the table next to you, where you are eating.

You draw a picture for a crying child on an airplane.

You give the parking space you were waiting for to someone else whose face looks more tense than yours.

We suspect our acts of kindness can make a difference, but often the evidence of the ripple effect never ever finds our doorstep — or awning.

Whether it’s marrying a man you didn’t know was seriously ill and helping him daily to fight the inevitable with love for 25 years. Or choosing to do the action equivalent of “Oh, Well,” and despite all evidence of it ever making a dent in suffering, you offer a gesture of acknowledgement anyway. You choose to brighten a dark moment in someone’s else’s life.

The Christmas lights flickered as a mustachioed man in a pick-up truck, with the license plate “GDCARES,” reversed and fishtailed out the flooded parking lot like Knightrider on speed. Its irate driver waved a fist at me and the guy in the wheelchair, yelling, “For God sakes get a hotel room!”

I stepped back. The man in the wheelchair straightened up as if a priest had corrected his posture.

Belly laughs followed at the absurdity. I recall feeling a sense of lightness. Like that Voltaire quote my husband loved, “God is playing for an audience who is afraid to laugh.” Like two defiant teenagers, we hugged again. The feeling in our hug, and the unexpected rhythm of our laughs, suddenly replaced our malaise with generous-spirited warmth living somewhere in the space between rain and pain. Insanity and sanity. Absurdity and logic. In the eternal moment of laughter existed a shared granule of hope in our respective challenges.

After singing in the rain Gene Kelly style, without the dancing, I went back inside. I think I recall, but it could be my overriding imagination as a writer — my little sister saw me somehow. She brought food for the man in the wheelchair.

“What were you thinking?” she whispered to me. Then patted my head — “Happy Anniversary and I know exactly what you were thinking!” I’d like to believe this small gesture of inclusion happened, but memory is often like a sea-sponge with a great capacity to fill its holes with something other than truth.

Author’s Note: Years ago, I had a dream job at the VA as editor of their newsletter. I became all too aware of the complex and daunting problems that our veteran population faces. I learnt that you could never know when one grain of sand is the one grain needed to complete the sandcastle. Kind acts are cumulative, and the ripple effect of our kindnesses is often unknown.