Midnight Mutterings | Gentleness

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||

I don’t have permission to tell this first story from the main character, so I won’t use his name, even though you can likely figure out who he is. I hope he doesn’t mind.

A month or so ago I bought a car from someone moving from the island and it came with a few things, one of which I couldn’t identify. It is a black plastic thing maybe 5 by 8 inches across and about an inch and a half thick. It has some flatfish buttons and seemed like some sort of tech device, but I couldn’t figure out what it might do. Nothing happened when I pushed the buttons and I couldn’t open it. It didn’t have any sort of display window I could recognize. None of my techie neighbors was around, so I took it with me when I went into Eastsound in case I ran into someone who might know more about mysterious tech devices than I do. (That could be just about anyone, of course.)

My first stop was the Library and I took the object with me when I went inside. I didn’t recognize the only person at the main desk, but I asked her if she had any ideas. She suggested that I ask someone else and pointed toward one of the rooms on the west side of the Library. When I went in, the person she suggested was on a ladder, attaching something to the wall next to a door and near the ceiling. His back was to me and he was hammering something to the wall. He definitely didn’t know I was behind him when he hit something (possibly a fastener or some sort) hard and it make a loud noise. I was surprised when he said, ‘Sorry, Wall.’ Somehow, his apologizing to the wall really amused and touched me. I don’t remember if I said anything to him about that, but I did interrupt his work and asked him if he had any idea about the black plastic object I had. I had my phone with me but it is too old to have whatever it is that you can take a picture of an object and it will identify it However, this man managed to open it easily, see the batteries and eventually pushed the right buttons and turned on what was, in fact, a light. Though it didn’t look like any flashlight I’ve ever seen. Possibly, it is a signal light one might use in an emergency, which was likely why it came with the car I had bought.

Somehow, I was so touched by the gentle ‘Sorry, Wall,’ that I have been thinking about it ever since. That day, when I went about my errands, I watched and listened to people casually treating each other with some of the same gentleness this man treated the inanimate wall. When I went back to the Library desk, I watched two librarians dealing with small children with the same care and respect and helpfulness I was looking for. Two of the children were so small they couldn’t see over the counter and the librarians were careful to make their faces seen when they were talking to the children. For the first time I thought that there might be a small stool in front of the deck so that children could see the top of the desk as well as what goes on behind. Of course, a stool for children might be a tripping hazard for adults. But the next time you design a Library desk, you might have at least a section that is low enough that children can easily see what’s going on. I can remember when I was too small to see through the glass in the top section of our front door and my hands weren’t large or strong enough to push down the the lever on the handle that opened the latch. I remember being frustrated that I couldn’t let the cats out no matter how politely they asked. I also repeatedly left doors slightly open when I went in and out (after someone opened a door for me) and was deaf to repeated reminders to close doors behind me. As the smallest of the six family members, I wanted to go in and outside whenever I felt like it.

My next stop was the Market in my search for gentleness. At first I watched adults pushing shopping carts with small children riding and there were many instances of adults responding to children’s requests kindly and patiently and gentle conversations between generations. And some not so gentle interactions when adults and/or children were visibly tired and frustrated.

One interaction particularly impressed me. When one child asked for one too many things, her young (presumably father) snapped at her to stop begging. He said they needed to finish shopping and get home with the groceries. The child, possibly three years old, instead of crying or making further demands, just patted the man’s hand on the shopping cart handle and said, ‘We’ll be home soon.’

Then I watched adult interactions as they were careful with their carts, making sure they weren’t blocking other shoppers and/or apologizing when they were. Of course there were exceptions, but they were few. The people who work at the Market seemed exceptionally helpful and polite, helping find things on the shelves even when they were interrupted in the jobs they were already doing. I think cashiering must be a really hard job, identifying items that can’t be scanned, packing heavy bags, dealing with cash and cards while standing for hours answering the same questions repeatedly, all the time chatting with customers. And especially being kind and patient with people on either end of the age range. They seem to realize that for some people, this might be the only human interaction some people have in a day or week.

After that I watched pedestrians and drivers negotiating the parking lot and street crossings. Again, I saw patience and kindness. No horn action that day.

The next day I took the ferry and went to Bellingham with a side trip to Kirkland, again taking the opportunity to look for gentleness in public. Of course interactions are different in larger populations, but still, when I looked for kindness and consideration, I could see it even when most interactions are with strangers who will never see each other again. Apparently homeless people were less in evidence as I know they can be fair game for people in luckier circumstances. Still on that trip I didn’t witness any overt meanness. More indifference, certainly, and surely plenty of strife I didn’t witness.

I’m not much of a Pollyanna. However my little experiment in looking for gentleness and kindness gave me a bit of hope. Certainly, we are a split nation politically and seemingly ethnically as well, but I have a little more hope since I heard someone apologize to a wall and then observing a lot of other people treating strangers civilly when I was looking and listening more carefully. Of course, I was watching in a time and places when people weren’t afraid or hungry, cold or worried about survival. Still, it was something…