Some of the most interesting, heart wrenching, thought provoking conversations I have had in my life have occurred with clerks who are helping me with my purchases. I am one of those people who strangers have a tendency to tell me their stories, and depending on the day, I consider this trait of mine to be a blessing or a curse. But at the very least, it is compelling to hear these random stories. This “gift” has given me an overall perspective of how rich and deep and interesting each individual life is, in this world. It’s made me less assuming about people and experiences in general.
My eldest son and his girlfriend are coming down to Florida this week, and so I wanted to buy them little “great to see you” gifts. There is a little shop by me that has various booths where people sell their wares – some homemade, some curated, some full of junk, some full of beautiful, rare things. Anyway, my son’s girlfriend collects gnomes and I knew that this one booth sells adorable handmade “lucky gnomes” that have lucky pennies cemented on the bottom of them. (Yes, I do have more than one of them for myself.) So, I picked out a gnome and then I started stressing about what to get for my son. (My son and his girlfriend are flying, so small things are in order, for it to be easy to be brought back up north.) My eldest son is a history buff and has always been interested in the World Wars, so in a booth full of antiques I found a set of WWII quarters that I knew that he would like and so I brought the trinkets up to the counter to pay for them.
The woman who was running the register was an older, animated, very talkative woman who had a deep Louisiana drawl. Earlier she had found me in the store and cornered me with drawn out descriptions of various gnome products that she would be selling in her booth in the store, coming this fall. Honestly, as I was getting ready to pay for my items, I was tired, I was cranky, and I wasn’t in the mood for random conversation. At that moment, I did everything that I could to shut off the “gift” of hearing stranger’s stories, short of being utterly rude. Nonetheless, the shop lady started asking me about the WWII quarters and I told her that they were for my history enthusiast son.
“My father was a soldier in WWII,” she said.
“Oh, wow. Both of my grandfathers served in the war, too,” I said.
“Did they come back?”
“Yes, thankfully.” I stalled a little, thinking to myself that this was sort of a strange question. Then suddenly, I understood where this was headed.
“Did your father come back?”
“No,” she said, more quiet and somber than she had been the entire time in which we were in each other’s company. “He was 29 when he went over, and he was 30 when he died.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t seem to hear me. She kept with her story. “My mother was gardening one day and she looked down and she noticed that her wedding ring had cracked in half. For some reason, she wrote this happening on the calendar. Weeks later, she received a letter in the mail, that my father had died on that very day that her ring had cracked.” And then the clerk, forced a big, gracious, old Southern lady smile on her face and told me to come back real soon. And in that moment, I was grateful in my heart that my “gift” of attracting other people’s stories, gave to me another story that I won’t soon forget.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.