I’m in a car dealership, waiting for an oil change since apparently cars now alert you when it’s time to go in. (I drove late ’90s and early ’00s cars for so long, I’m still getting used to this concept. A’s car, which is newer than mine, even tells him when his tire pressure is low, though I think it only kicks in when the pressure gets dangerously low.)
I’m sitting in the coffee area next to a Filipina who is also a US citizen through her father. She joined the Air Force to see the world. She’s been a nurse (and now manager) for about 40 years, and at the same hospital where A had his surgeries and hospital stays for about half of that. She used to work in cardiac surgery and spent a good half hour geeking out about how cool cardiac surgery is and telling me about how they do heart transplants and double-lung transplants and fish out blood clots, and how some of the procedures require inducing hypothermia to slow metabolism so patients don’t die when their hearts stop pumping.
She talks till they call to tell her that her car is ready.
The subject matter is frankly a bit morbid, especially the transplant part, because you have to wait for someone to die in a way that doesn’t damage the organs you need and hope that they’ll be a match.
But for a few minutes, she shares something she loves in this world, and I learn something new and understand a bit better how this world works.
She leaves.
A few minutes later a woman in her 70s sits down. Short white hair with a cloud of magenta on top. She says, A lot of my friends dye their hair—brown or black—so I figured, why not. She does a different shade each time. Her hairdresser worried at first that this woman wouldn’t be happy with it, but now is into it (the hairdresser, too!). She says, I’m not dead yet. When I turned 70, I got a couple tattoos.
There’s something fascinating about this particular choice: Even as she changes her hair color, she’s embracing her naturally white color because magenta hair works on white hair in a way that it doesn’t in dark hair. It’s striking.
And these interactions, these choices, these things strangers share with us, whether through conversation or through a physical choice like hair color, give so much food for thought: Are we doing work we love? Are we taking time to notice the people around us? How do we want to see the world and our lives as we grow older? And how do we see ourselves today?
But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
This Glass Has Water 