Thursday, October 04, 2007

Smiles, Everybody - Smiles!

I looked up and it was five o’clock, and then 5:40, and then 6:15.  I’d had a lot of work to do so I’d put my head down and did it.  I think it was going on seven when I stepped out to the elevator lobby.  I was just starting to take stock of my own physical tiredness and tension, and I sort of sensed a tipping point. I had a choice to make.  I felt like a clenched fist.  I could either leave that static tension behind me there at the office, or I could carry it out onto the bus and right back home with me.  And it was at that very moment I was favored with an intervention.  The smiling lady got me, and suddenly my choice had been made for me. 

Used to be, I had a sweet Latina bubbeleh who’d come daily to my work area at 6 or 6:30 to clean stuff up.  She was very polite and certainly nice enough. Honestly I don’t even really remember her very well.  Sometimes a cute young woman stood in for her - even politer, very understated.  She, too, seemed nice enough, but not particularly distinguished, other than that I recall that she was pretty cute.  Or something.  Details have faded.

Moving along, the subsequent successor to this assignment was a swarthy, heavyset man.  His beard was always some variation of a stubbly grizzle, his gut hung lewdly over his belt, he slouched and he scowled.  I’d say “hello,” extend the basic courtesies – he’d glower at me as if he were just waiting for a chance to poleaxe me.  He once watched a door slam right in my face, not lifting a finger to stop it; one other time he wouldn’t swipe me in to my work area when I’d left my access card at my desk, though I’d said hello to him there not five minutes earlier.  He was not a nice guy, and I didn’t like him.  I was glad to see him go.

Then, perhaps by way of a karmic make-up, we got the smiling lady.  She’s matronly, a little heavy, with large eyes and careful hands.  She smiles when she sees people, with a smile like I’ve never seen before.  It is gentle, loving, welcoming, and forgiving; it is more fulfilling than my favorite breakfast served in bed; it is peace and release, it is succor and redemption.  This woman smiles from the depths of her soul and when she shares it with me I can feel it in the very center of my being.  And somehow, she imbues that smile into every little thing she says and does.  Even just a “good evening” seems like a joyful benediction from this lady, as she separates my recyclables from my garbage.  All she need say is “good evening”, and that smile fills you up to the top of your heart. 

And when a disaster struck her old village, she shared her concern and anxiety with us in halting English, explaining that her village is small and far up in the mountains and barely has power on good days, and my heart just bled for her, and all those unimaginable Andean villagers she was so frightened for as well.  I stammered some words of hopeful consolation but it sounded hollow to me; regardless, she gave me a slow sweet smile and went on her way.  Somehow, even though she was heartbroken and exhausted and I really had nothing to complain about in the world, she wound up making me feel better.  This lady is like a spa treatment for my emotional condition.  I like her just fine. 

Then, one day a few weeks ago, at about 5:45, a very nice young man rolled his rumbling trundlebin of supplies and refuse to my workstation.  “Evenin’, sir,” he ritually intoned, grinning easily and moving efficiently to clear my trash before he’d even bothered me…. He seemed like a good enough kid, but my heart fell nonetheless.  Where was the smiling lady?  Was she okay?  Had they taken her away from me?

No, I assured myself, it’s just a one-time thing.  She’ll be back.  Tomorrow.  She might even still show up tonight.

But she didn’t, not that night, nor the next.  She just kept not being there until, after a week of increasingly-poignant nightly disappointments, I gave up.  The smiling lady was a memory.  The new kid was the new kid. 

So, I’m leaving the office. The day’s been backloaded, with a stultifying three-hour meeting at the start and an semi-Sisyphean build-up of tasks over the course of the afternoon with, of course, the messiest, most aggravating job of all saved for last.  I’m walking out with my jaw set, my brow beetled, and a whole evening ahead of me for stewing in that day’s festering juices.  My bag swings low and lean on my shoulder as I muscle out of the auto-closing door and head to the elevators. 

Up the hall, then a left to the unadorned tedium of the lift lobby itself.  I stride efficiently to the wall and punch my “down” into the callplate with an armload of lingering office energy, when, from the opposite end of the hall, I’m hit square in the heart by a big warm smile.  “Hello, good evening,” is all she says, but boy oh boy she makes it count…. The smiling lady, in her green smock, her hair in its netted bun, her eyes warm and clear, pushes her jumbo castered dustbin around the corner.  I’m so glad to see her there; I struggle to stammer some kind of greeting. She just keeps that smile turned on me until my ‘vater comes and I ride alone downstairs. 

As the numbers descend on the panel in front of me, that smile still reverberating around me, I feel the mess on my desk fading into irrelevance.  And as I ride home on my bus, regaining my perspective and my energy with every block of the route, I feel intense gratitude for my intervention from the smiling lady.  I’ll never underestimate again what a difference a smile can make at the end of a long scowly day.  Or at any rate, one of her smiles.  Hers may have more going for them than most do, but I’m going to emulate her if I can.  I’d like to think of that smile as an inspirational goal.