Two-Face

Last night, I ran into a Corps member from Minnesota I hadn't seen in a few days. He flew out West over the long weekend to visit his mother who is dying of liver disease.

"I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish my year of service," he said. "The doctors say her liver could fail any day and I want to stay in the program, but I also don't want to get a call in the middle of the night, you know?"

I nodded and laid a hand on his shoulder. "You have to do what you feel is right. This program will always be here waiting for you."


"I know." He broke into a sudden grin as we looked at one another. "You notice what I did to my face?"

I studied him carefully and then laughed. "You shaved only half of your face. Why?"

He shrugged. "Just thought I'd do it, you know, and see if anyone says anything."

I grinned. "You look like a comic book character. Like Two-Face or something."

He laughed and we went our separate ways.

The Snails of Irvine

When I drove through America last fall, I stopped in Irvine, California, to visit my friend, Louise. On the night I arrived, we decided to walk to a nearby restaurant for dinner.

As we walked, Louise said, "Watch where you step!"

"Why's that?" I asked.

"When it gets dark and damp like this, the snails cover the sidewalk. My heart breaks a little when I hear one crunch beneath my foot when I'm not paying attention."

I stared down at the sidewalk and walked lightly, but didn't spot any of Irvine's snails until Louise and I reached the restaurant. I stopped short and pointed it out to her. Louise knelt down, picked the snail up off the concrete, and gently placed it on a leaf of a decorative shrub going along the sidewalk.

"That's one no one will step on tonight," she said.

Mr. Bill's Aurora

When I worked as a banquet bartender for a resort in Two Harbors, Minnesota, I knew a man who called himself Mr. Bill. He was my boss, in a way, and an affable former burnout who smoked hand-rolled cigarettes made with top tobacco.

One night, as I walked into the banquet staging area to grab more bottled beer from the cooler, Mr. Bill waved at me from where he stood, the door leading outside propped open with a rok, smoking a cigarette.

"Come out here, man," Mr. Bill said.

I hesitated. "I've got to get this beer to Josh. We're almost out."

"Don't worry about it. Just come out here."

I sighed impatiently, set the beer down on the table, and joined him out back. "What's going on, Mr. Bill?"

Mr. Bill grinned at me. "Look up, man."

I did and saw the Northern Lights for the first time in my life as they danced dimly above. "It's beautiful," I half-whispered.

Mr. Bill nodded as best he could with his neck craned upwards, puffing on a stub of a cigarette.

Reluctantly, I broke our reverent silence and said, "I should probably get that beer to the bar."

Mr. Bill squinted at me through his bifocals. "That can wait man. You and I might not ever see this together again."

I returned to my place beside Mr. Bill and went back to looking up.

Hand-Holding

I'm spending a week at a camp for people with physical disabilities in California. Today we took a group of people who are blind to a movie theater that offered headphones and gave a play-by-play of everything you see during the movie.

I was seated next to an 88 year old man named Tom who lost his sight at the age of 19. Tom is a brilliant man, successful in business, has several patented inventions, and has been married for almost forty years. About 45 minutes into the movie, Tom leaned over and whispered, "Would you mind if I held your hand for a few minutes?"

I decided, what the hell. So, for the remaining hour of sappy chick-flick, I held the hand of a sweet old man. I'll always wonder whose hand he pictured himself holding, but regardless of what he saw in his mind's eye, I was flattered.

Contributed by Aryn.

From "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

"It is a completely selfless love: Tereza did not want anything of Karenin (her St. Bernard); she did not ever ask him to love her back. Nor had she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company."

--from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

Contributed by Aryn.

Since 1981

I took a trip to Washington, D.C., with some other Corps members last Saturday. We saw the usual sights, the monuments and the museums. We also stopped by the White House.

Across the street from the back entrance to the White House, I met an old man in a black-leather biker jacket camped on the sidewalk. He was manning a protest, against nuclear armaments and wars consisting of him, his beagle, a tryptic of hand-painted wooden signs, a camp-stool, a day old copy of the Washington Post open atop a milk crate in front of him, and a large plastic tarp behind him in case of rain.

"How long has this been going on?" I asked.

"Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, since 1981," the man replied.

I whistled in amazement and went back to reading the slogan painted on the tryptic and shaking my head at the graphic photos of survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

A family of three passed on the sidewalk behind me. I heard the little boy ask, "Daddy, what's he doing?"

"Protesting," the father said, smiling at me.

How Free Being Naked Can Be

On our ride to the University of Delaware on Thursday morning, some members of my AmeriCorps team got to talking about the things you can do for free if you're naked.

"There's a place in Washington where, if you bungee jump naked, you can do it for free," Seth said.

Tracy, a quiet and tall blone chimed in from the back seat of the van. "A friend of mine, she went skydiving in the southwest, somewhere, and they told her if she jumped naked, they'd only charge her half-price. So she did."

Delaware City

On Tuesday, my AmericCorps team piled into our twelve passenger government van and headed to Delaware City. Our assignment was to explore this small town on the Delaware River and talk to its residents.

I met an older man as he closed up his antique shop on Main Street. He ducked back inside after I said hello to grab a pamphlet on the history of Delaware City.

"These were printed a few years ago," the old man said, "but they're still good."

I smiled and glanced through the brochure. "History doesn't change much, right?"

The old man smiled back. "No. I guess not."

"How's business?" I asked.

The old man sighed. "Bad. I might close down and try again someplace else. Things around here are getting better, though, but when you get to be my age, you can't wait around forever."

A stray cat jumped from a nearby fence onto the sidewalk and cozied up to the old man's leg. He reached down to pet it.

"Friend of yours?" I asked.

"Sure. This one's Nessa."

I squatted down to try and pet the cat and she shied away.

Don't take it personally," the old man chuckled. "She's a little skittish around strangers. I hardly ever see her in the summertime."

Another cat crept out of the alley and circled the old man.

"Another acquaintance of yours?" I asked.

The old man nodded. "That's Inky."

I smailed. "You seem to know every cat in town."

The old man laughed. "Everyone around here does. The postmaster in town, keeps her cat, Lucky, in the post office. Lucky will just lay up there on the counter all day, everyday, except Federal holidays, then she gets to stay home."

I laughed. "Thanks for the brochure. It was nice talking to you."

"You're welcome," the old man said, shaking my hand. "Come back in the summertime, if you can. That's when they start running the ferry to the Civil War prison. There's more to see then."

"Will you still be here?"

The old man stroked the cat, Nessa, again. "Oh. I imagine so."

A Million Acres

While stuck in O'Hare International Airport for nine hours last Tuesday, I struck up a conversation with a man from Wyoming. Ten minutes in, he made the following proposition.

"I tell you what, if you're interested, I'm looking to sell off a million acres."

I laughed. "That's a hell of a lot of land."

The man shrugged. "It's not so much. Folks in Wyoming call that a farmette."

"How much for a million acres?" I asked.

The man from Wyoming reclined in his chair across from mine. "A dollar an acre," he announced. "A million dollars."

"I'm going to have to pass," I said.

The man cracked a rueful grin. "Fair enough. It's not good land, anyhow."

Perspective

A few years ago, I was driving down Hewitt Ave, and trying to make a left turn into one of the all-too-small parking lots on Hamline's campus. I waited patiently as a car came towards me in the opposite lane. The opposing car inched along, barely moving. With each nano second I became more and more frustrated with his pace.

I was running late, knew I would likely not find a parking spot even here, and just wanted to make my damn turn. As the car came nearer, the driver rolled down his window--I was nearly irrate now, ready for whatever he might say to me. He leaned through the open window and shouted, "You're beautiful!"

I've never felt my perspective on an incident change so quickly.

Contributed by Aryn.