Stitches East was, as always, a glorious overload of friends, of yarn, of being surrounded by creative people–I’m not sure where to start, so for right now while I have a rare moment with a computer, forgive me, I’m skipping to what followed. (Besides, how much can anyone put up with me gushing over people gushing over…yeah. Me neither. Although, it *was* fun!) So.
Last night after the Market closed, my friend and fellow knitter Kate was singing in a band, the Boogie Knights, doing a benefit not far from there for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in memory of her brother Robbie. I lost a sister-in-law to lymphoma myself; my friend Karen and I very much wanted to go.
But in between we needed to grab a meal. We were in a section of old Baltimore where there was just absolutely no parking. We spotted a Subway sandwich shop and decided that that would do the deed just fine, if only we could get to it. After a time or two around the block, I finally said, Here–you stay here in the No Stopping zone so you can circle again if a cop waves at you while I run in and order quick and run back out.
Great. Go for it.
And so my cane and I hopped out of the car and straight up into the door of the shop (don’t fall on those steps!) and stood behind a few people in line. I hoped it wouldn’t take too long.
I had a few moments to observe. There were three people working: a middle-aged man, I’d guess Mediterranean/maybe Middle Eastern (I was trying to place the accent), a late-20’s Hispanic woman, and a petite, pretty (I think she would have been surprised to hear me say that, but she definitely was) young black woman, who avoided eye contact and looked terribly beaten down as she pulled out and replaced several empty stainless-steel canisters of sandwich makings with full ones and reached for and cut and filled the rolls to order, while the other woman stood still, muttering at the other and rolling her eyes, swishing a little lettuce off the counter into the trash. Watching their interactions and who was doing the actual work, my heart went out to the younger one. The fellow was ringing up the purchases at the end.
I managed to catch the black woman’s eye and smiled as I placed my order; I apologized a bit for my deafness when I didn’t hear her questions about specifics. She started to make Karen’s and my sandwiches. I lost my balance and grabbed at the counter edge with my free hand. I was wobbling fairly constantly on my cane–I was jetlagged, I’d just done two full days of Stitches, I was hungry and exhausted and I was more unsteady than my usual.
And yet. There’s something very strengthening about feeling needed. I definitely felt needed in this place in this moment of time. I silently prayed for all three of these people working together and tried to live up to that prayer and make a difference to them all by simply being nice.
And the young black woman responded to that. She started looking me in the eye too. She straightened up just a bit. She started smiling back, a bit faint, but hey. And then the other woman lightened up, too. The man gave me a warm smile that went beyond that of oh good, another sale tonight.
Just a few minutes together. The whole feeling of the place had changed. I thanked the young woman who’d prepared our dinner: a crab sandwich! I was home in Maryland again!
Karen was still there at the curb, no problem there; I hopped in and we went looking for Kate’s venue, eventually found an actual parking spot, grabbed it, and sat in the car and ate.
And it dawned on me and I said to Karen, You know? Just every now and then, it hits me that it’s totally okay that I was in that accident. That young black woman knew that I, too, had been through–well, something, anyway. She could relate to me as a fellow traveler because my life too had clearly had some hard times. And she and the others were just so much happier when I left than when I came in–it all works out. It really does.
We went to the concert. It was absolutely fabulous. The music, truly, but also…We all knew the cause we had come together for and the parents and sister we were there specifically to honor. Bob. Deb. Kate. Robbie’s family. It mattered to each one of us in the audience that we were there for them, and they were wrapped in overwhelming love at the end. As well they should be. As well they should be.