“Eh! Where you going?”
“Excuse me sir?”
“You going da wrong way, you gotta turn around. Go dat utta way outta da parking.”
“I’m going this way out sir.”
“Utta way mo betta, dat’s why.”
“It’s ok sir, we’ll get there going this way.”
“Utta drivers always go da utta way… Da right way”
I say nothing more as my elderly passenger continues to grumble under his breath. His voice has that raspy, crusty gravel to it that begins with a sharp barking-like sound, but then trails off to a bit of a wheezing cough at the end of every utterance. The voice of someone who has been shouting at the world for his entire existence and is only now beginning to run out of steam. Yet he refuses to see the futility.
I see this a lot in my job.
I see it so often that I no longer seem to need much of my real-time meditative practice to keep me in gentle, friendly, helpful, compassionate service mode. More often, I become amused. Especially if (like now) the passenger in question is not in obvious pain.
I chuckle a bit as the old “gentleman” speaks up again once we’ve reached the first intersection passed the shopping centers’ parking lot. The lot we’ve just exited (by the “wrong way”).
“See… I toll you. If we going da utter way, we be tru da intersection by now. See… I toll you.”
“I see that. You were right sir. Next time, I’ll go that way.”
The man grunts sharply and then says nothing more. Possibly he’s unprepared for me to acquiesce so quickly. More likely his silence is one of self-satisfaction. I don’t care. I’m just happy that he’s staying quiet as I stop at Pearl-Ridge Community Park to pick up my other passengers for this ride. They’re Micronesian immigrants and as they board, I can see the racist disgust (which I’d expected) on the old man’s face. Yea, I’m happy he chose to stay quiet.
Inhale, two, three, four, five, six…
Exhale , two, three, four, five, six…
We continue the rest of the ride in relative silence. The elderly man makes a few more comments under his breath when we stop to drop the Micronesian women (and one child) in Ewa Village, but I don’t hear him. I’m glad. My internal judgement machine doesn’t need any more fuel. I have already been thanking him for showing me how NOT to be. How I will be making sure I DON’T behave as I continue my own aging process.
With my own challenges.
We continue on to drop the man off in Kapolei and as we approach his street, I hear his raspy, gravelly, crusty voice… counting.
“One, two, tree, four… ”
He’s counting the streets before his turn. I anticipate his next assertion regarding my driving, and chuckle a bit as my prediction proves exactly correct.
“Turn here… Here! Turn now. This my street. Turn here!”
He shouts this over and over as I turn. Before, during and after… throughout the entire turn. He keeps it up while I am turning despite my having never indicated that I was going to do anything other than turn, right… HERE!
And he repeats it until the turn has been long completed, only changing his demanding direction when we are finally approaching his house. He then shouts for me to stop.
“Stop HERE! This my house!”
But this man’s display of how he is certainly the kind of elderly man I vow to never even resemble, does not stop quite yet. On no.
“Toot da horn!”
No one is yet here to greet him so he repeats his demand to be served.
“Toot da horn!”
(against regulations) I sound the horn a quick one, but keep it as quiet as possible.
“Toot da horn! AGAIN”
I do not, and am happy to see a woman (caregiver? relative? who can say?) approaching the van. The man goes back to his default crusty grumble.
My eyes connect with this woman. We say nothing but there is a silent exchange of knowing between us.
A knowing of how little we can often do, other than to simply show up in service. And do the best we can do.
Throughout the clear, the happy. The crusty, the crappy…
Every day.
Blessed…
m(___)m
