I Fell in Love Tonight at W...

I fell in love tonight at W-mart.  It wasn’t like I thought it would be.  His eyes locked mine and our worlds collided.  He could barely avert his gaze from me.  I imagine it was because we are worlds apart.  It wasn’t the difference in our ages that drew us.  The woman he was with, like me, had on a black coat.  It was hand-made, stylish, particular.  My black coat was shorter, trendy, and the zipper down because:  a) it would be hot in the store with it up; and b) the zipper has stripped itself in the middle at least three times today and I have lost my patience with it.  My shirt, in honor of St. Patrick’s day is a mottled hunter green/white tie-dye Henley.  The woman with him, had a solid tasteful dress with a pretty white apron on front.

She had a cheerful face that I knew he must love passing those great brown eyes across – the same eyes that looked at me and wondered, “Where are you from?”  His cheeks had a ruddiness that comes from being out in the cold – and they added to the peaceful, settled look he had for the moment we shared the space in the fabric department.

I was buying a soft, swirly pattern of greens, blues, purples for the room that I keep my birds in.  That room has an ocean theme; mostly because, well, the room that had the bird theme was too big to just keep birds in it.  It seemed like a waste of space.  So I moved the birds.  And the room decorated with bird décor is now the guest room for the guests that never seem to come.  Nonetheless, I have one more room to myself in my house that I bet he does not have in his.  The woman he was with was buying solid colors:  white, brown, blue.  I venture to guess her skills as a seamstress leave me in the absolute dust.

How I wanted to talk to him!  I could not think of an opening line.  I also presume because clearly his ancestors are not the same ethnicity as mine, that we might not speak the same language.  But perhaps the language of love could transcend it?  As I wondered, another fellow came around the corner and grinned at me.  I wouldn’t get this kind of attention at a bar.  I just know it.  I looked down to him, and grinned back – thinking for a minute I could bend down and tie his shoes for him as a gesture of friendship.  But nowadays people don’t trust strangers’ innocent gestures.  And perhaps we shouldn’t because of the world in which we live.  A world, that is perhaps more mine than his – even though my religion tells me to be “in the world and not of it.”  His religion says the same exact thing; from the same exact book.  Except his family lives it more profoundly. 

They set themselves apart quite conspicuously.  While the other kinds of Christians try to be a leaven in the world – a source of raising up of ethics and morals and kindness.  I hope.  I get my two yards of fabric and push my cart away – when he returns to his home he won’t snap on a light switch and probably won’t flush an indoor toilet and certainly won’t use a phone. … even when he is old enough.  He will drive a buggy, court a girl his own age by the moonlight, raise crops, and live in peace.  If the people in my zone can figure out how to keep peace on the planet. 

As I take my subtle leave from the love of my life – a four month old chubby Amish baby in a grocery cart -  I move to the other side of the store and remember by immediate experience what other cultures are among us.   A girl with purple hair passes by.  Chic.  But probably not going to get her to Wall Street any time soon.  An adult woman and her late 20’s daughter pushing a cart with a baby princess arrayed in pink sucking a pacifier.  The woman talks to no one in particular when she passes the freezer case.  I watch her young adult daughter walk away.  She is wearing mid-length athletic shorts even though it is 45 degrees outside.  She’s got a nasty bruise on the back of her calf, and below it, a tattoo.  They look like the rural poor trying to look like they are “making it work” in Central New York.  How many of us out there are faking it like this?  If her boyfriend works at Burger King and gets the much-contested minimum-wage bump it won’t encourage him to do any better for their little family.  It will just lock them into a trailer park for the rest of their life.

I pass a woman who has dread locks that were a foot long and very neatly coiffed.  And smart jeans.   And a nice shirt.  Good for her.  We are still shopping where we are shopping though.  Maybe she works for a sheriff’s office as the voice on the other end of the phone that says, “Yeah?  What thehelldo youwant?  I ain’t got all day here.”  Her face is neither friendly, nor inviting, nor tired.  I wonder if the Girl Scouts ask her to buy cookies when she walks by.  I don’t think my face is particularly friendly, and they hound me every single time they see me.  But maybe that has more to do with my physique which appears to have been familiar with cookies a time or two.

Then there is the couple in the cereal aisle.  He has a pierced thing on his face and a goatee.  His clothes again scream “rural poor.”  The girlfriend with him has taken no obvious pains to enhance her feminine side.  And she makes me think of my friend the tour guide in the Appalachians who declared to me once with mischievous zeal:  “I LIKE my women with some meat on their bones.”  I think to myself, meat, yes, but not a whole eight-course meal!  But I assess their state carefully for I am at least a two-course meal and people who eat in glass houses should not throw stones.  Or something like that.  You get my point.

And the middle aged couple in the freezer aisle.  I suspect they have the life I thought was going to be mine.  He wanders a bit and she playfully goes up to him and links her arm in his like she has secured a prize.  He seems to feel good about that maneuver and they chuckle and stroll along together as if they are on a date – not in a grocery aisle.  I wonder if my mood would be better if I thought of every moment of life as a “date” of some sort.  I bet they are Baptists.  I am not a Baptist, but I always picture Baptists as happy people.  Maybe he works an office job at the power company and she teaches kindergarten in a rural community.  Perhaps their kids are grown and gone and they are part of the lucky few that remember why they got married 25 years ago?  Does she bring him a beer at the midpoint of him cutting the grass on a hot summer’s day?  Does he massage her feet when they watch Jeopardy on tv together at night?  Will he take fiendish delight in not telling her what exactly it is the guys talk about at the Moose or the Elks at their monthly meeting?  Does he tease her about the 80 year old woman in their choir who can’t carry a tune in a bucket just so that his wife can whap him with the dish towel as she cleans up the kitchen after supper?  Americana Conjecture is a consoling thing sometimes.  I hope their life is as happy as it looks here in Upstate New York.

Then I round out to the checkout line.  I spy him again.  My brown-eyed little wondrous bundle of curiosity.  Sitting in the cart as his mama pushes him.  She is old enough to be a mother, probably just barely.  And she is young enough to be my own daughter, probably just barely as well.  Her husband – standard Amish straw hat in place, blue shirt sleeves, black everything else, manages the checkout and then they all stroll happily across the parking lot.  There is no buggy waiting.  There is a truck.  Because even in Amish country at this part of the USA you could freeze on a night like tonight.  Hey, they may be cutting a corner, but it is their corner to cut.  I just hope they take good care of little brown eyes.  He lives in a world where sometimes I wish I was.

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