I’m visiting my son in New Jersey. While strolling his neighborhood, I spot a guy about my age walking toward me sporting a baseball cap with a big “C.” I immediately think it’s a Cincinnati Reds hat – my favorite team – my hometown team. I approach him with a big hello.
“Wow a Cincinnati fan in New Jersey. Who’d a thought?” I call out.
He looks a little puzzled. “Actually,” he sputters, “it’s ‘C ‘for Chicago.”
I’m momentarily disappointed, but we continue chatting and one subject veers to another. I learn he is a close neighbor of my son and daughter-in-law and that his wife is the CEO of the Museum at Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Immediately, my baseball antenna withers and my journalist antenna surfaces.
I decide I have to meet this woman – the keeper of an iconic building that reeks of the immigrant experience.
At a time when immigrants in this country are routinely being vilified and attacked, I think it’s important to highlight the ways the immigrant experience is being honored and kept visible and vibrant. This woman is my gateway.
Would I be disappointed?
Will my preconceived notions about her be out of whack?
Will this spontaneous encounter lead to disaster?
Once again, I’ve gotten myself into uncharted waters.
A few days later, I walk up to her house just as the postman arrives. I watch her greet him with great friendliness. I hear her ask him who is in the car behind his truck.
“My supervisor,” the postman replies.
She runs up to the car exclaiming, “He’s the best, he’s the best!”
My instincts are correct. Meeting her is going to be like chugging a double espresso – an immediate and pleasurable rush of the senses.
She’s my kind of woman:
Dressed in black
Funky earrings
Casually coiffed hair
Engagingly warm
First, she asks me if I’d like a cup of coffee. Nothing peculiar in that question. Eagerly, I nod affirmatively and began gushing over her unique home, the plethora of flowering plants on her expansive deck, her circular stairway positioned prominently near her front door, and her eclectic art.
I am floored by her second question: “So,” she gazes at me intently, “tell me about yourself. Start with your emerging from the birth canal.”
WHAT?
Wait a minute, I’m interviewing HER.
And how in the world do I organize my thoughts in a nanosecond centering on seventy-three years of living?
I squirm. Cross and uncross my legs. I carefully put my coffee mug down as I frantically and silently catalogue my life into four categories:
EXPERIENCES
OPPORTUNITIES
OBSTACLES
RESOLUTIONS
She senses my jumbled thoughts tumbling about in my head. She explains that when you interview someone for a job, the applicant will talk about what they think the interviewer wants to hear in response to how they would do the job they are interviewing for.
This makes sense to me.
I surmise from this that when getting to know someone socially, it’s a different focus: a search for commonality.
And that’s what we did that afternoon.
We talked about what two women getting to know each other for the first time WOULD chat about – husbands, kids, our childhoods, our interests and our struggles.
After one hour and fifty minutes, we began chatting about the museum in earnest.
What did I come away with?
As we go through life, we lose people close to us – through death, distance, time. But our need for connection remains. Often unbeknownst to our conscious selves, we constantly seek links to each other to fill the void of loss.
On that day in early May, sitting in a comfy chair facing a stranger, I realized that I’m never too old to make a “new best friend.”
And the good part? I think she felt the same way.
Next week: The Museum at Eldridge Street
Keep Preserving Your Bloom and Fighting The Fade,
Iris Ruth Pastor
Here are my two upcoming zoom appearances:
What: The Donna Seebo Show
When: Friday, June 4
Time: 11:30pm EST (EEK!)
Link: https://delphiinternational.com/events/
(mine is not listed yet)
Fire up your neurons to maximize your well-being. Join me for an inspirational chat focusing on jump-starting change through reflection, imagining and re-booting in order to live fully and joyfully.
When: Wednesday, June 16
Time: 7pm EST
Link to register: https://www.jewishtampa.com/jewish-federation-events/womens-philanthropy-event
Keep Preserving Your Bloom and Fighting the Fade,
Iris Ruth Pastor
PS I’m not the only one whose voice should be heard. Voice yours on the subject of PAK – Parenting Adult Kids. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/F3W3XMX