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Thursday, October 20, 2005

Stories that Aren’t From Me

My sister called me this evening as she drove to the grocery store to replace the crockpot meal she destroyed. A social worker in a retirement home for the rich, she told me how one of her residents died this week. And how, when my sister saw the 98-year-old woman’s cold body flopped on the side of her bed, she had to leave the room before she started laughing. A spitfire until the day she died, the old lady passed away with her middle finger clearly extended, like she was saying to death, “Eff off. I’m going but not willingly.”

In one of my favorite books, For the Time Being, Annie Dillard writes the below:

Sometimes we touch strangers. Sometimes no one speaks. Like clouds we travelers meet and part with members of our cohort, our fellows in the panting caravans of those who are alive while we are. How many strangers have we occasion to hold in our arms? Once there was a beautiful, wasting young woman in a turnpike restroom; I held her in my arms several times as she got in and out of her wheelchair, in and out of her jeans.

In the country then called North Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula, I visited a southern town whose tribal citizens had seen few if any Westerners. Hundreds of pedestrians were crossing an intersection. There, where jammed streets met, I saw a parked motorcycle. On a special seat behind the empty driver’s seat sat a baby, an agreeable-looking, solid baby, whom I greeted. The baby generously extended to me a key ring. I could not help but notice that several hundred Yemenis, the baby’s father or brother doubtless somewhere among them, abruptly stopped moving to watch.

I took the key ring, held it in sight, and thanked the baby, the way one does. The several hundred Yemenis held their breaths. I know they were holding their breaths because when — after stretching the interval until the first instant the baby began, visibly at the eyebrows, to doubt life’s very fundaments — I handed the key ring back, they all exhaled at once; I could hear it.

I’m not sure how this entry fits together.

Posted by Aaron on October 20, 2005 9:34 PM