I give you two microstories, presented without comment.
2024
A woman named Mary greets you at one of the entrances to the second largest hospital in the United States. By the time you reach her, you’ve survived the harrowing interchange of Interstates 95 and 91, bested the speedway/demolition derby that is MLK Jr BLVD, and navigated your way through the labyrinthine Air Rights garage to claim a coveted parking spot all before entering the dizzying maze of this cathedral of health care.
Chances are, this won’t be your biggest challenge of the day.
Mary is posted in reception at the Smilow Cancer Center entrance of Yale-New Haven Hospital. Whether you’re there to visit your oncologist, any other doctor, or any patient, you are one of hundreds and hundreds of people to pass through these doors daily.
You’re probably a bit on edge from getting there, compounded with the stress of whatever you’re doing there.
And Mary is the sweet salve that powers up your strength and optimism. After your brief interaction with Mary, you feel lighter, buoyed with a little more courage to walk towards your hospital destiny. When she asks where you’re going, it isn’t to pry or offer advice, but to make sure you know how to get there. She hands you a badge and a color coded pass.
She isn’t loudly cheering you on. She doesn’t wear a shirt emblazoned with “You got this.” There is no poster of an ocean at sunset overlaid with text that says “You are never given more than you can handle.” None of that baloney.
She has a superpower.
You can see it in her eyes. You can hear it in her voice. She knows you’re most likely not walking past her to welcome a sweet bundle of precious baby into the world.
She looks at you in a way that makes you feel seen, like there aren’t 10 people coming up behind you. She makes sure she knows how to pronounce names. She wishes you well in a way that doesn’t sound like she’s said it over a hundred times already that day.
It’s like she sends an invisible lifeline, a sparkle that says “I know you’d rather be anywhere but here, I see you. I honor your effort.”
It doesn’t cost Mary anything to make eye contact and recognize your humanity. She is at her job the same number of hours every day no matter her attitude.
I don’t know how Mary ended up in this position. Are kindness and compassion skills you can put on your CV or resume? I can’t type for shit, but I have a big heart. Does this exhaust her? What does Mary do when people are mean to her (whatever it is, it wasn’t her fault)? What about when she’s having a shitty day? How does she power up in the middle of a busy shift? Does she get in her car at the end of the day and listen to rage metal at full volume? Does she make up stories in her head of the people she meets, of her regulars?
Does she know she makes a difference in your day?
1997
The first full day of our road trip began with me emptying all of my crap out of the back of my dad’s station wagon in a motel parking lot outside of Barstow, California—while the car was running and my dad, in the driver's seat, was waiting to go. After a few minutes, he jumps out of the car, slams the door, and storms over to me, bellowing. “What the hell are you doing back here?”
“I’M TRYING TO FIND MY GODDAMN TAMPONS!” I yell back, surrounded by the detritus of my life.
And thus changed the complexion of this cross-country road trip with my father, my brother, and me.
I was leaving what I thought was my new home in San Francisco to go back to my yacht-chef life, which I’d abandoned only 7 months prior. While packing up, I told my parents that my vacuum was too big to ship. No problem, my dad said. He and my brother will drive from Connecticut and pick me up.
And so they did.
Our first stop was Candlestick Park (a baseball stadium), where my retired-football-coach-dad managed to get us inside to walk around the training rooms. I managed to find the freezer with free ice cream. The fun stopped there.
After I re-packed my crap (including the vacuum) into the still-running car, we drove a ways before stopping for breakfast in a town whose only commerce seemed to be a McDonald’s. Fine. Whatever. I won’t rehash the particulars here, but the counter person misheard me, I didn’t get what I wanted. She wasn’t very helpful. I was a brat.
I didn’t go full Karen or anything, but I was a bratty brat brat. I was behaving poorly, and I knew it. I left in a huff.
It took all of 3 minutes after we left for mortification to hit me full force. What horrible version of me rationalized that ugly fuss? Where did that come from? Who even am I? This was precisely half of my lifetime ago and I am still mortified. It’s a scene in one of my awake-at-3am™ award-winning anxiety brain films.
There was absolutely no excuse for my not-quite-a-tantrum. I’d worked at McDonald’s for 5 years. Then Dominos. Then Taco Bell. I knew better. It was a stupid iced tea/hot tea mistake.
And I was an asshole.
While I was inside ordering/being a brat, my brother bought a local newspaper from a machine. After my 3 hour driving shift it was my turn to read the paper in the backseat. Opposite the crossword puzzle page was an article about the lives of two local teenagers who had died in a car crash a day or two earlier.
I don’t know what mortification times shame to the power of disappointment equals, but that pretty much summed me up.
It was such a small town. My counter girl was the dead kids’ age. There is no way she didn’t know them. Or know someone who knew them or was out with them that night. There is no way this didn’t impact her.
And there I was, pitching a hissy fit over a cup of tea while she steeped in grief.
I sent an apology, a handwritten card addressed to her care of that McDonalds. I don’t know if she ever got it. It doesn’t excuse my behavior. It doesn’t make me a hero or a less shitty person. But the memory and mortification have lived with me for 27 years.
You are so good.
I love these and hope they are part of your book, that I cannot wait to read.
As usual, one of your greatest superpowers is inspiring others. Among all of the feels you carried me through in your stories, inspired still rises to the top.
Xoxo