It turns out that I am no different than many Americans.
I have limited appreciation for the elderly.
Perhaps this is because I have little experience; I have been separated from the elders in my family since I was in my teens and my parents divorced and my mother in her shame moved us hundreds of miles away and never looked back. My own parents died young.
Perhaps it’s because connecting with the elderly brings not only their aging and mortality into focus, but mine.
Perhaps it’s because I am afraid that, if I start talking to an older person, in her loneliness, she won’t stop.
And then the other day, I found myself in the depths of the parking lot at the wonderfully popular indoor Farmer's Market in Kent.
This is a very tight, very crowded parking lot on a Saturday morning. And if you find yourself driving through, looking for a parking space, only to find none, and so you need to get back out again, good luck. There is no back entrance, and it seems impossible to turn around, especially when the lot starts filling with other cars in the same fix.
To the market’s credit and FYI: There is another, huge parking lot right across the street. But we learn these lessons the hard way, n’est-ce pas: One must get stuck in the small parking lots of life first.
Indeed, this past Saturday during the jingly, lovely, magical holiday market, I lumbered all the way through the lot, looking for a space, with other cars hovering in various states of disarmament and disarray all around me. There were no spaces. But with all the other cars stuck in there, I found I couldn’t turn around. And so I drove all the way to the skinny back of the lot where I did what amounted to an 11-point turn, taking a few tumbleweeds with me.
Finally, I was headed out in the right direction. Only there sat another car, with apparently no way out or no way in either, driven by a man who might well have been Ebenezer Scrooge or maybe Silas Marner.
His shoulders were hunched over the steering wheel that he gripped, his face a crumple of wrinkles. The age in his skin suggested at least 90 years of living, while the look on his face suggested abject confusion, anger, frustration, fear, I don't know.
“Oh, no, I’m never going to get out of here now,” I thought.
I thought maybe I should get out and help direct him so we can all get out of this mess. And then I saw a younger woman in her car, apparently trying to vacate a parking space next to his car.
"Hm. If she leaves first and heads straight out, he can back into her parking space and drive away. And then I can, too," I thought.
I made eye contact with her and held up an index finger in the universal No. 1 and then pointed at her. “You go first and then he can get out after you,” I mouthed.
She shook her head in understanding, and then proceeded to drive her car out, at which point the elderly man, with no small amount of effort an 11-point turn of his own, backed his car in.
All the while, with the most pained look on his face.
I thought he might cry, and then, suddenly I felt the same.
This could one day be my own son.
One day, God willing, my son will be 90. And I will no longer be here to bolster and protect him. He will have lived a full, rich life. But now he is alone in a beat-up old car, trying to find a parking space among the whipper snappers surrounding him so he can go inside the Farmer’s Market and buy potatoes for his soup.
As I steered my car past the man and his car, I turned my face to make eye contact with this living soul who shares the planet with me.
I gave him a thumbs-up and the biggest smile of love and compassion that I could muster.
What I got back was an even bigger smile. His face seemed to glow with that smile. For one shining moment on that day in December 2012, he was not invisible.
Perhaps it’s because connecting with the elderly brings not only their aging and mortality into focus, but mine.
