By Dale Westervelt
Picture by Maria M Oosthuizen HERE
You’re settled in at a local cafe with a tall coffee, a coveted armchair, and an open laptop.
As you log onto the cafe’s wi-fi, you notice an overwrought young woman in a nearby chair.
She’s curled up like a ball of yarn that's about to roll off the chair into a long, loose string. Her hands are heavy with distress. She nervously chases them through her oily hair every few moments. She appears to be wrestling between two states of mind; steeling herself to be in public, and desperate with anxiety.
In an instant, her face slaps flat into her hands. First she leaks out a muffled squeal. Then a soft sustained cry, like a newborn puppy. Her ears and neck turn sunburn red while her shoulders start to riot and quake.
Shouldn’t I try to do something for her? “Excuse me.”
She looks up, her face is ghost white, coated with a sheet of sweat and patchy red blotches.
“I’m sorry to intrude. I just wondered if there was... anything…you need.”
Whatever held her face upright earlier washes downstream in that moment. Her eyes fall into her lap. [Pause]
She tries to collect herself. [Exhale]
She shoves some hair behind each ear as though her face is a table and she’s clearing it off for supper.
Over the next hour, she recounts a series of Job-like events from the past two years — the tragic loss of her fiancee and then her twin brother. She chronicles a list of calamities and indicates that the real list is as long as your arm.
She knits her story out of these events and a handful of vital human questions. Does my life have any meaning? Does suffering have some sort of meaning, or is it random and indiscriminate? Are there reliable answers to these questions, or do most people — for sanity and survival — settle on their own most comforting narrative and just go with it.
Several times she allows her eyes to flood her cheeks, sheepishly mopping them with her sleeves and a stuffy-nosed “I’m so sorry.”
It’s no small thing that you made her trust you enough to share these things with you, a perfect stranger.
Finally, she stiffens up straight to gather herself and then shrinks six inches as she puffs out all her air.
With a face of anguish and relief, she shows you her smile, warm and fragile. The shape she makes with her mouth is like a rose in the desert; something that pops up in a place where it’s so starkly out of place.
Finally, her drawn and pale face nearly whites out her smile as she meekly asks, “So … what do you think about it all?”
What will you tell her?
** You may email replies to: DearChristianityPodcast@gmail.com with SUBJECT LINE: "Perfect Stranger" (Please no more than 250 words.)
Comments