This morning I woke up thinking about my friend's Mom, "Ginnie".
As I stagger out of bed and down the stairs to make my coffee, I know precisely why she is on my mind. I have an important task at hand but I've got no experience with said task. I know I'll be asking questions and making mistakes before I am on the right path.
Questions and mistakes make me uncomfortable and overwhelmed.
I want to do things right the first time. I don't want to look stupid.
And then, I take a breath and think of Ginnie and the impression she made on me.
Her youngest child and I have been friends for most of our lives. As kids, we were on the same softball team. When you play second base and your friend plays shortstop, you develop an understanding and rudimentary skills based upon simple drills. She runs to cover third, I run to cover short; she makes a move, I back her up. I run to the ball, she runs to cover second; I make a move, she backs me up. If you're lucky, life on the field naturally extends to life outside of sports and I always felt we had each other's backs.
After high school, we lost touch as friends so often do, although I once caught a glimpse of her at a David Crosby concert. She was scurrying to her seat, close to the front of the stage, and when I hollered, she saw me and smiled, nodded in my direction and flashed me a peace sign in a blur of magenta tie dye shrouded in sensamilia.
After college, I got hired by a well known insurance company that seemed like a safe bet. On the first day of orientation, I sat with 40 others in a conference room to learn about company history and expectations. After two hours of corporate jargon, we were offered a break and a dozen smokers scrambled from their seats like racehorses out of the starting gate. One of them was my friend's Mom, Ginnie.
I hadn't seen her since my softball days but admittedly, she is hard to miss. With an orange pixie cut, bright coral lipstick, dark crimson nailpolish, a slim figure that would have been model-perfect for the late '60s, and a crushed velvet jacket in a shade of eggplant that suggested she wrote her own fashion rules, Ginnie stood out; a kaleidoscope of color among the rest of our drab business attire. We were mostly in our twenties, "dressing for the job we wanted" per the Harvard Business Review. I wore a yellow blouse and a black fitted jacket with heels. I had my curls shorn into a stark crew cut. I look at my albums from that time and shudder at my snapshot which now comes across as part bumblebee, part buzzsaw.
I approached Ginnie, (re)introduced myself and we sat alongside each other during training whenever possible. She was easily 25 years older than I, but she had a schoolgirl buoyancy. When asked by the trainers if we had any questions, she always had five or six. She raised her hand repeatedly and requested that the presenters slow down, for she didn't write as fast as they spoke and she was surely missing half of what they had to say. She didn't mind that it was clear she needed extra time and extra help. She demonstrated, for those of us who felt insecure or like we had something to prove, that it was better to be comfortable enough in your own skin to throw that glittery manicured hand in the air and ask for what you need as a way to be successful.
Concerned about my image, I was competitive and worked relentlessly to make a good impression. Ginnie used to visit my desk, encouraging me to slow down, to stop drinking so much coffee, to take a break when one was offered. When making a point she had a way of crinkling her brow, pursing her lips, twirling her long chunky bejeweled cross necklace into a silvery choker and then offering whatever suggestion she felt you needed to hear, her downstate accent creeping in especially when she was feeling feisty.
While we had been trained to end calls quickly, I could hear her chatting about bagels and long weekends over our divider, knowing her minutes per call ratio were going to be, as usual, the longest on our team's printed list, handed out weekly. She'd disagree with the 30 year old manager who crouched like a vulture on the side of her desk, directing her to quicken her pace. She made no bones about suggesting to others that they stop taking themselves so seriously.
The big colorful cross necklace she wore was costume jewelry from Avon and when it came time for me to say goodbye to that particular job, she hugged me so tightly it made a lumpy impression upon my chest. Once in a blue moon I see someone strolling by wearing that very same pendant and I think about Ginnie and her unabashed fearlessness when it came to asking for what she needed.
Remember her daughter, the one I played ball with? When Ginnie passed away, I sent a letter. She sent one back. Then her father passed away as well. We started going to lunch. One day the daughter shared that she had gotten a tattoo in honor of Ginnie and wouldn't you know? It was a copy of that very same Avon cross I grew to associate her with...the one that reminded me to stay true to who I was. I express how cool I think this is. Like a flash, I think about how questions and uncertainty are okay. I think about asking for what we need.
Then sitting across from me, the daughter admits she is attracted to women after a lifetime of setting those feelings aside.
She has questions.
She is uncertain.
And when she, like a shortstop makes this move, I, on second base back her up.
