I’m already late for the train when the sight of her stops me in my tracks. A tiny middle-aged woman wearing an enormous black coat with “KILL THE DEATH” embroidered in giant letters across the back. A confusing message and an aggressive one, writ so hilariously large on such a minuscule person. The photos I snap in the underground station are dim and blurry, but just seeing her feels like a prize.
A few weeks later, I lie openmouthed in the dentist’s skyscraper office, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the park and bus station. The dentist has just leaned over me when I catch something familiar out of the corner of my eye and bolt upright. It’s her, KILL THE DEATH, standing, improbably, in the bus shelter four stories below us.
I snap another photo and lay back down, laughing.
*
Abby and I are children in the Jeep’s backseat, begging our mother to drive us past The Bowling Ball House. We don’t know who lives in this small brown ranch; we’ve never seen the interior and can’t guess at the inhabitants’ motivations. All we know is that someone has lined their flowerbeds, walkways, and each side of their short driveway with brightly colored bowling balls and pins. The neighbors with their tidy lawns and staid houses must consider the place an eyesore. It’s tacky. It’s chaotic. It’s ridiculous.
And we love it. So. Damn. Much.
*
A writer friend feels frustrated and discouraged in her career. She tells me that every major magazine that’s published her writing in the last decade has gone under and vanished from the internet, that her work’s disappeared so thoroughly that it’s like it never even existed.
One day she gets an email that begins, Sorry to bother you. The letter writer goes on to say that they recently lost their copy of a magazine article my friend wrote 23 years ago. That they and their friend had loved the article so much they tore it out of the magazine and kept it. It started something like… the letter writer says, and recites my friend’s own words back to her.
*
I am ill and weak and dizzy, stuffing plastic bags into a recycling bin in the supermarket vestibule. The box is full, nearly overflowing, so each bag must be shoved through the small, sharp opening with great force. My hair’s greasy, my body hurts, and I still have to pick up my groceries. A neatly dressed older shopper enters the vestibule and approaches with her empty cart.
You’re doing a really good job with that, she says.
I startle and tense up, certain she’s mocking me. Then I meet her smiling eyes and realize that she means it, that this total stranger is expressing genuine admiration for the way I’m disposing of plastic bags. This is weird—and exactly what I need. Her encouragement drifts down gently onto me like a soft, light blanket. My pinched shoulders relax. For a moment everything around me glows, just a little bit.
*
When you have the courage to be yourself—to exist unapologetically, to take up space, to share your gifts, to be kind in a way that’s true to you—you are doing magic. You may not know the effect you’re having, or on whom, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
There are at least (at least!) two people in the world who need you to be yourself: you, and the perfect stranger whose life will be blessed by the simple fact of your existence.
And in case no one has told you yet today: You’re doing a really good job with that.
a tangible reminder
The inevitable has come to pass: I’m making stickers. I’ve got a limited number of these left; if you want one, email, comment, or DM me and I’ll mail it to you for $4 USD (postage included).
I love these stickers so much that I’m tempted to just give them all away, but it turns out that having stickers printed and shipped is not free (???), no matter how good the idea is.
Note: If this quote doesn’t ring a bell, please go read Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese.” (Then come back and get a sticker.)
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. I am so, so glad you’re here.
You are such a good writer it is almost disorienting. (This is a compliment <3)
Now I don't feel so weird for my habit of blurting out compliments to strangers. By the same token, I do love not having to be good all the time. Thank you for the stylish reminder--that would be a great t-shirt.