The oldest trees often bear the sweetest fruit.
Joelle said at some point on January 29, 2007
While leaving CVS, I was intercepted by this woman in the parking lot. Her name is Michael Lob, pronounced… you got it… Michelob. She said "Michael for short". She was from Austria, was once a teacher, a practitioner of healing arts, and clearly lonely and quite senile. She asked me if I was a teacher because I am wearing a t-shirt that says "old school" and asked me how old my school was (which I found so charming, I could barely stand it).
She was selling these books she’d written and self-published, which were primarily gibberish or perhaps just artistic tangents by someone who has lived a very long life full of many things. Her clothes were mismatched and worn, her teeth were extremely yellowed, but she had so much personality and such kind and determined eyes, that I found myself standing there for 40 minutes listening to her tell me story after story about nothing and everything all at once.
She tried to sell me a book and some of her self-proclaimed "abstract art" (which she is proudly displaying in the photo — she wanted to make sure I got it all in). I knew that book would just end up in the trash or collecting dust on a shelf, so I gave her all the cash I had on me and told her to hang on to the books to sell to someone else, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
She gave me an orange book (not pictured) titled "Human Happenings", then she sang me a song about Easter Island that she wrote, gave me a well-worn cut-out piece of paper listing spices and herbs that heal that had been photocopied since 1972. She also made up a song about my name (something involving French, she said) and included a ‘bookmark’ with an angel on it that she had made from construction paper and a clipping from an old Reader’s Digest.
As I stood with one foot on my car floorboard and one on the pavement, inching ever closer to leaving, I asked if I could take her photo. There was something remarkable about this woman, this immigrant, this elderly eccentric free-spirited teacher that made me want to remember her. I snapped several without her realizing it, as "they don’t make any sound!", but she insisted that she pose, displaying her works and she stood back and smiled, head high and proud.
Despite my desire and repeated efforts to go home and not stand in the parking lot of CVS forever, I stood. I stood and I listened while this sweet, yet slightly crazy woman rambled and laughed at her own jokes. Why? Because she made eye contact with me and there was something there that said, "Please listen."
So, I did. And despite my discomfort, I’m better for it.
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