We all have family folklore, the stories that unfold at get togethers time and time again. It doesn’t matter how many times you hear it, it produces spontaneous laughter despite years of repetition. One particular line that comes up often when my mother in law is around is, “So, Ann, did you meet anyone interesting in the bathroom?” Years ago, Ann went into the restroom, met some pleasant people, and returned to her party exclaiming, “I just met the nicest people in the bathroom!” My father in law, Josh and his brother love rehashing this tale when they are all together.
Naturally, I thought of Ann when I found myself immersed in the life story of a beautiful elderly woman who pulled the threads of her past in the middle of the Target restroom, letting them unravel before me in under the unflattering fluorescent lights. For me, it was another Target expansion for my job. I stood before my section among the greeting cards lost in my own thoughts. A woman with curled long black hair and a billowing white embroidered blouse tip toed up to me. “Scuse me Miss? Can you tell me where I can find photo envelopes?” Her husband stood quietly behind her, hands thrust into his worn overalls. His slightly smudged glasses sat on top of his bulbous red nose.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I began, getting my standard response ready, “I am just a vendor. I don’t work for Target. I’m not sure where those are.”
“Oh, of course,” she said looking at my clothes and noticing that I was not dressed in the traditional red and khaki. “Well, we’ll just keep on looking.”
As soon as she turned to leave I felt a pang of guilt. I should have just tried to find it for her. I shop Targets frequently. Certainly I could find it easily enough. By then, they were gone, and I still had a lot of work to do. I silently vowed to take the time to help the next person.
After finishing half of my new section, I stopped to take a restroom break and get a snack. When I walked up to the sinks to wash my hands I noticed the black haired woman from earlier leaning into the sink applying brown eyeliner. Her hair hung down her back in soft waves. I wondered if she slept in curlers at night, remembering how I had wrapped my own once long hair in pink foam curlers for awhile in high school.
“Did you find the envelope you were looking for?” I asked as I lathered my hands up with the slightly stinky pink soap.
A little startled, she jumped and turned to me looking confused. “I was working in the cards and you asked me for help finding picture envelopes.” I reminded her, feeling guilty for scaring her.
A look of recognition crossed her face. “Oh yes. I remember now. Yes, we did find them. I told my husband, now you know what we need to do? We just need to think of the place where they are the least likely to be, and I’ll bet they‘ll be there.” She finished washing her own hands and grabbed a paper towel from the wide mouthed black dispenser. “And that’s just what we did! There they were!” Her face lit up with satisfaction.
I thought where the least likely place would be in Target, maybe women’s underwear? Hardware?
“I wanted to send a picture of a birthday cake to a friend of mine who is dying from cancer,” she continued.
“Oh gosh, I am so sorry,” I said. Another woman and her developmentally delayed adult daughter walked in.
“I gotta go PEE PEE!” the daughter yelled.
“Well go then honey.” The mother answered calmly.
“Yeah, lung cancer,” she continued, stepping aside to let the mother and daughter pass. “His birthday was July 3rd. Do you know he’d never had a decorated birthday cake?”
“Oh no!” I exclaimed, immediately thinking of my family and their obsession with Taylor Bakery birthday cakes.
“So my husband and I, we drove to Kentucky and made sure he had a decorated cake this year.”
“That is so nice of you!”
“We took a picture of it too. I wanted to be sure to send it to him, so he’ll remember it.”
“What a thoughtful friend you are,” I replied. By this time, the woman and her daughter had finished their business and we moved away from the sinks to give them some space. The woman looked at me with a slight smile. I realized that I was really finished in the bathroom, as was the black haired woman, but she was on a roll, ready to tell me more. I didn’t want to cut her off. The only thing waiting for me was more cards.
“ He was a hunter. So we had deer put on that cake for him.”
“Wow,” I said, this took me back a bit. I tried to imagine a deer cake. I’m sure he loved it. If they can do Nemo and Dora, certainly a few deer wouldn’t be too hard.
Over the next 10 minutes or so, this woman shared how her friend Howard, married a woman 30 years younger than he. “But I never seen two people more in love. I tell him, ‘Howard, age doesn’t mean a thing.’” She explained that they were so close because they had both lost one of their children. “I lost my son 4 years ago in a car accident.”
“Oh, I am so sorry.” I said again, the lights in the bathroom seemed brighter, my reactions amplified by the white tiles of the bathroom. She dug in her purse and produced a laminated picture of her son.
“He was 47,” she stated.
“He looks just like you,” I said. Studying the picture before handing it back to her.
“We both have the same high forehead,” she said, smoothing her own forehead with her hand as if it were really that of her son. I thought of my two kids and how often I pass my hand across their sleepy foreheads at bedtime.
As if reading my mind she said, “You just can’t ever take a day for granted you know. Once they are gone, it’s like hole in your heart. It never ever goes away.” She put the picture on the eyeliner back into her purse.
I took this as my cue to turn towards the door and make our way back out into the red and white retail world. She followed me out. Her husband stood leaning against the wall just outside of the restrooms, his hands still resting in his pockets.
“You have a lovely wife,” I told him. He smiled and nodded.
With that she pulled her purse strap up over her shoulder and looked at me with her newly lined eyes and said, “I sure hope I will see you again honey.” There is something about women calling me honey that I love. They could be any age, young or old. It is like a verbal pat on the back, a word of gentle inclusion.
“Oh, me too.” I said. I turned and walked back to my little section of cards. I felt so honored that she shared her story with me, a stranger in such an unusual place like the bathroom. I know I am not out there saving the world each day. But somehow I felt such a sense of buoyancy after just those few moments of connection into other person’s life, that for whatever reason, I was the one she shared with that day. I smiled, imagining the photo envelope making its way to Kentucky, and the smile curving across Howard’s face as he viewed his deer birthday cake once again.
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