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My Passionate Pastime
byRosanne Welch
Some people collect baseball cards, I collect people.
I like to meet as many diverse people as I can and hear their stories as
I travel through my life. It’s my
passion. Heck, it’s my obsession.
I’ll go out of my way to make or maintain the acquaintance of someone
who has an interesting history or a funky job.
If I earned a finder’s fee for every new story I collect I’d be a
millionaire. As it is, I’m happy
and that counts for a lot. I was on the phone the other morning with one of my
menagerie. Sr. Theodore once taught
in the classroom across the hall from my first teaching assignment in Cleveland.
She smiled brightly every morning no matter the weather.
Of course, while I traveled ninety minutes over snowy freeways to get to
that warm little building, she had only to bundle up and walk ninety feet from
the convent.
Sr. Theodore had been teaching since she’d been a novice which by the
time I met her was some forty plus years. What
interested me about her was that she could easily associate with a young, new
teacher like myself, but her students who were only four or five years younger
than I missed the boat. They
didn’t understand her sense of humor or they didn’t try.
The beautiful gray hair that softly framed her gray eyes served as a
deterrent to them when in fact it was her greatest lesson for them.
By example she was teaching our girls every day that they shouldn’t
fear being themselves. No make up
necessary. No nail polish or hair
dye or even high heels. Just
present yourself to the world neat and clean and with a well stocked brain.
That’s how you should demand the world judge you.
If more little girls learned that lesson, there would be fewer wounded
women walking around our world.
Freddie’s another one of my prizes.
He’s our supervisor in the forest where my husband and I volunteer once
a month. He’s what they call a senior worker. He’s over 65 and officially retired from the career he
maintained since high school -- warehouse manager.
His last position was with Reynolds Aluminum and they gave him glowing
letters of thanks when he retired. He
showed them to me proudly one day when another Forest Service employee made an
unkind remark about Freddie’s Hispanic heritage. He also showed me even more touching letters.
He lost his first wife almost twenty years ago to cancer and he still
speaks of her daily. He showed me the letters her doctor wrote to him after her
death, praising Freddie for being such a supportive husband. It meant a lot to him that such an educated man had said such
complimentary things about him. It
means a lot to me that someone from such a different background has become my
friend.
Sally’s a trip. She’s
the mother of a famous sitcom star and lived for four years in our apartment
building. After the Northridge earthquake the building never quite
recovered so we moved across the street and her son bought her a condominium,
but I still continue to visit her. She’s
my Avon lady. And she’s my Avon
lady because I like the sound of having a sitcom star’s mom as my Avon lady.
It’s so LA. But it also
speaks to me of her desire to be involved, not to sit back and let someone else
take care of her completely. To
keep her hand in. It’s a good
lesson for many people I know and I know her friendship’s
a good lesson for me. Sally’s
an animal lover, too. People moving
out of the building into places that wouldn’t take pets often left there’s
with her knowing her’s was a good home. When
we lived there she had three dogs and a cat named Elvis.
Early one Valentine’s morning I saw her dropping off those small cards
we used to send in elementary school on certain doorsteps in our
building. She smiled as I walked by
with my morning paper and when I got to my doorstep, there was a card.
But it wasn’t for my husband and I.
It was for our two cats, from Elvis.
I
realize in reminiscing that all these people are elderly.
I guess what fascinates me about them is that they’ve accumulated so
many stories. So much life. And for some reason most of my generation’s just not
interested in them anymore. So when
someone does stop to listen, they share. Those
of us in the younger generations are in such a hurry to get wherever it is
we’re going, we don’t take the time to share in the same way as Sr.
Theodore, or Freddie or Sally. But
we all have stories to tell. I
suggest we start listening to each other again.
Who knows what we’ll learn?
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