Just Smile
For about ten years of my professional life, I worked
in a two-story office building. The
cafeteria, where the coffee pots were, was on the lower level. So, every morning, after getting settled in
and handling anything of urgency, I grabbed my coffee cup and headed downstairs. “Bob” who worked in Sales had an office near
mine and we shared similar morning routines.
It was more often as not that I would pass him on the stairs as I was
headed down for coffee, he was already on his way back up to his office – his already full cup in hand.
Every day, as we passed I would wish him a good
morning. His “reply” was always, “Hey, how
are you doing?” This went on for months,
and over time it began to bother me. At
first, it was just a passing thought, but there was something about that
exchange that wore on me. One day I figured
it out. It was that question. “Hey, how are you doing?”
It seemed like a normal, perfectly socially-acceptable
question. Why did it begin to bother me? It finally occurred to me that he never
waited for a reply. In fact, he always
continued on his way without even a glance in my direction. He really showed no interest in my
answer. So, I made up my mind and the
next morning when he asked, “Hey, how are you doing?” I stopped, turned towards him as he began
walking by, and I said, “If you really wanted to know how I was doing you’d
wait for my answer.” He stopped, turned
half way back around, and said, “I guess you’re right. I never really thought about it.”
I’d like to say that we began having meaningful
conversations from then on, but as I recall, the next day when I said, “Good
morning”, he simply replied,, ”Good morning.”
Our relationship, I knew, was
never going to grow beyond that. Every
day after that I was content to just smile and wish him a good morning, even
when he fell back into his habit of asking, “Hey, how are you doing?” as he
passed by.
Yesterday was my birthday. Because of my blog that gets posted on
Facebook, I have a number of “friends” who knew from my profile that it was my
birthday. When I went online in the
morning after breakfast there were a number of messages wishing me “happy
birthday”. Some had taken the time to
add a note about hoping the day would be blessed and enjoyable. I know many people post one big thank you,
but I like to respond individually.
Yesterday, Mother Nature was not in a good mood. She brought freezing rain and ice. I was not too surprised then, when in the
middle of a “thank you” reply the screen went black. We had lost power.
The first thing I did was report the outage to our
Utility. The second thing I did was get
dressed so I could go outside and fire up the generator. We have a high water table anyway, so my sump
pump runs all year, except if we have a particularly long dry spell. I know that if it is still raining, which it
was, I have about an hour or so before water begins to flood the basement.
I moved vehicles around so I could get the generator
out. I knew that it had a full gas tank
as I try to be ready for these situations.
I opened the fuel line, put the choke on, flipped the run switch to “ON”
and pulled the starter cord.
Nothing. I pulled again and again
and again. Nothing. I went back through the whole routine, and
pulled and pulled and pulled.
Nothing.
I called my daughter, and verified that they had power. I drove over to borrow their generator. It was an hour round trip. By the time I got back home and went down the
basement to hook up the electrical cord, there was already over an inch of
standing water in the basement.
Thankfully, the borrowed generator started right up and 15 minutes later
all that standing water was pumped out.
The main crisis was handled. About
the time that the sump pump had caught up, the power returned.
As the calendar would have it, it was also my assigned day
to do hospital visits. I headed into
town to visit two parishioners, and of course, they were at the hospital on the far east side of town. There
were family members in each room that were grateful for the visit and the prayers. All of them asked, “How are you, deacon?” I decided to just smile – they didn’t need my
concerns piled on top of theirs.
I had to hustle home so we could have a quick supper
before heading back into town for Holy Thursday Mass at 6 PM. Michelle made me my favorite birthday cake –
a coconut cream pie, but we decided to wait until we got home after Mass.
As expected, the sacristy was filled with people who
all had questions about how we were doing all of the special things of that particular Mass. When they also asked “How are you?” it was best to just smile. The moment was not about me.
When we finally got home the first thing I did was
finish responding to all those who wished me happy birthday. There were so many that wished me a “terrific
day”. It was best to just smile and say “thank
you”. Being fully truthful would just
spoil the moment of someone wishing me a great day.
As I finally got the chance to settle into my chair,
Michelle brought me a birthday card and a piece of coconut cream pie. The card was beautiful. The pie was delicious. All I could do was just smile.
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
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