Why I love them!

I love them. And tonight I can't stop thinking about them. Everything I think and do is tinted by my thoughts of them. Their faces and voices run through my head and I wonder how they are doing tonight. I wonder if they are warm enough, full enough, loved enough. I hope and pray that they are not lonely or confused or hurting. That none of them has fallen and has no way to call for help. They are so beautiful and tonight I am facing the fact that they have become a part of my heart.

Take, for example, my Squash Man. I don't know his name, not yet. He doesn't know mine either, not yet. I hope someday that can change! :) I met him earlier this summer while I was cleaning in front of the store. I was working away sweeping up straw and dead mum flowers and merrily greeting customers when he walked up. "Say Ma'm, can you tell me how to cook these here squash? My wife useta cook them up real good but now she don't member how she done it and I cain't seem ta git it right!" So, since our store prioritizes on customer service, I stopped sweeping, leaned on my broom, and we talked. We had a long conversation about the virtues of different squash and how they are best cooked and eventually we settled on what we both believed his wife would probably like best. Acorn squash with brown butter, a bit of cream, and some salt. That morning I heard stories I'v heard several times since and I know I will hear many times to come. He told me all about how he has learned to stretch their social security checks to last all month. He explained how his wife is progressing with Alzheimer's and how she just is not the person she once was. I listened and learned and felt my heart stumbling and stuttering and loving this dear wonderful old man with his gnarled fingers and his crooked hat and his hair just a bit shaggy.  He was in again the next week and I got to help him find some mild sausage. We stood in front of the freezer and he unburdened his weary soul. The words poured out of his mouth and my heart broke for him. I was grateful, oh so very grateful, for my knowledge of his wife's disease. As I explained to him, as simply as I could, what was happening to her physically and how it was playing out in their lives, I could see the light dawn in his eyes. "You mean she doesn't know she's being nasty? She doesn't mean to be so picky and mean?" Truly one of the greatest blessings of my life was explaining to him that no, indeed, she did not mean to be ugly. She was not trying to hurt him. She was not responsible for her actions. As I stood behind the deli counter that day and watched him walk out my heart sang at how much lighter his step seemed! Several days later when he came back for fresh hamburger I asked him how she had liked the sausage and his answer made me smile "Oh she loved it! Now me, I'd like it a bit spicier but ma missus don't like stuff too hot so I just do what I can ta please her" He did not say it begrudgingly and as I watched him I prayed that if ever I am in that situation I will love with that same devotion and desire to please!

Then there are the sisters. They are night and day different and I am entirely crazy about them! Both of them. They come into the store all the time and are definitely two of my favorites. One is sassy and smart and sometimes entirely grumpy. No one in the deli liked to help her because she is super picky! So, because I love older ppl and because I'm obstinate that way, I set out to make her happy. I think the day I really fell in love with her was the day that I became her personal shopper. And she really does see me that way! The other day she had me searching through the cookbooks that we sell to find the best apple butter recipe :) Her sister, on the other hand, could not be easier to please. Neither lady is soft spoken at all, but they come across so very differently! The second sister, whom I believe is the elder one, had a stroke at some point and is therefore very hard to understand sometimes. The other day she was in when I was working checkout and she was explaining to me all about how her sister has the MOST glorious garden and how she is forever trying to get her to work in it. "She thinks she can con me into doin her work! She calls me up all the time 'Come see my garden' she says and she thinks I'l get down on these arthritic knees, I got the arthritis real bad, and weed her garden! She's got another thing comin!" With that she smacked the counter and giggled loudly, her beautiful eyes twinkled in delight. She was looking especially darling that day in a lovely pink sweater! :) The thing about these two ladies is that really, there are three. Today, in an encounter that shook me to my core, I met the third. Apparently she is as hard, cold, angry, and homeless as her sisters are sweet, endearing, and well off. As my friend Wren and I were driving today we saw the third sister walking down the side walk, long black coat swishing around her ankles, walking stick tapping, black beany pulled down over chopped off dark hair, wrinkled skin sagging below large blacked out sunglasses. My heart instantly convulsed and I told Wren "We have to do something! Lets go back and see if she will go for lunch with us." So, after praying together we went back and tried to talk to her but she wouldn't even talk. She answered our request for her time with a brusk shake of the head and kept walking. When we got to the corner where she had to cross the street she snatched a garage sale sign out of the ground and threw it down violently. I kept trying. Asking if she'd had lunch, if we could go somewhere warm, if she'd like to just hang out for awhile. Nothing. When the walk light came on and she headed out across the street my heart felt like it was following her. I can't give up on her! Somehow I want, need, to find a way to reach her. I think of her beautiful sisters and I wonder how, how this can be?

There are more. Lots more. Tonight it is mostly these four that rattle around in my brain but there is also the dear little lady who comes in to buy food for her friend that has cancer. There is the darling one who helps with all the charity work in town it seems! There is the sweet friend of ours who comes and brings latte's sometimes. There is the dear dear man who comes after his mozzarella cheese. His back is swayed and his legs are crooked and sometimes, often actually, he flinches in pain. But he never ever ever complains. There in the exceedingly short tempered and grumpy little old lady who never smiles. Wren gave her a small bouquet of flowers last week and although she said thank you she never even cracked a smile. There is the sweet sweet little asian lady who comes in. Her eyebrows are tweezed to within a few hairs of nonexistence and she has on a clown's mask of makeup, but her sweet spirit lights up the store when she walks in. Her "Tank Yuu, Tank Yuu" and repetitive bowing are adorable beyond belief! And the brusk little german lady, she makes me giggle every time she comes in! You see? I love them. I love them so so very much! Sometimes I look at them and I think I will simply implode with it. Those are the times when Strider says to me, with so much wisdom for which I am so so grateful, "Thats why your in school. Thats why you don't belong in a store, but rather in a nursing home."

So all of that to say this, I am GRATEFUL tonight that by the time these sweet sweet old people that have so totally won my heart are ready for a nursing home, perhaps it will be me caring for them. And if it is not them, it will be a hundred more who's bright smiles or listless eyes or wrinkled skin or smelly hair or repeated stories have captured my heart. And that, my dear friends, is my dearest, deepest desire. Amen.