And They Swam And They Swam All Over The Dam

I was hit by a car when I was sixteen. I've written about it before, it's old news, it happened a long time ago. I broke my left fibula in 14 places, broke my collarbone, my cheekbone. Took the Percocet, the morphine, dreamed the dreams, had the visions. Learned the lessons of the hospital. Morphine burns when it goes in. When they ask you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10 it is meaningless. Percocet makes you nauseous but it is pretty. Nurses are nice when you are nice to them.
       [Be nice to them. They are the lifelines. They are the angels and the demons. You get to choose which form they take for you.]
          Ask for the food your caretakers want because you won't be able to eat it when it comes. No one cares if you shit or not, but they will ask. Understand that you are the center of the universe, but be a benevolent god. It hurts worst in the morning but don't worry about crying. Everyone does there. Buckle down. Wait.
     I understand pain and hospital and drugs. At sixteen. I do not know what it is like at 86. I think it is hell. I now understand that I have not yet gone to hell. I appreciate that.
     My grandmother, my Granny, fell on Sunday and broke four ribs. Four ribs. Just think how much they move, how much they contain. All your guts, all your gizzards. Every breath and yawn and cough are inside those ribs. Hiccups? Shut the fuck up. At 86. I spent 8 and 1/2 hours with her today. I watched. I remembered.
      I remembered how it was with my broken collarbone, and how every breath hurt. So you don't breathe deep. So you develop a cough. So it hurts more. Like a knife in you. Like a stabbing. The drugs they give you (I still feel nauseous when I hear about people using these for fun) are not perfect, they all have their tricks. A burned out vein or seasick dreams? A waking sick smile and an all-forget or a heave-ho and the knife we go? You get to choose. Or, I suppose, nothing, and wanting to please-let-me-die every minute. You ask for relief and they give you something. Something.
      So. When my Granny laughed and then moaned, or when she forgot and tried to use her bad-side arm and then moaned, I knew. But.
      She's got a touch o' the dementia. We don't have a name for it really, she just gets the forgetfuls in a bad way. Also a case of the out-to-get-mes. We all (and by all I mean family and hospital staff) have a part in the paranoia play in her reality, and it is, it is her reality. I didn't have that. I had the pain but I knew where I was. I knew I was loved. I dreamed of the ocean, and of falling, but I woke up and knew it wasn't real. She dreams that she's been forced to go in a locked room in a building half finished and it is dirty and cold, she dreams that she's been strapped down, she dreams that she's been bad and so she's been left out over night to sleep outside and she cannot sleep. She wakes and believes it is real. It is real. She experienced it. She has never been treated like this. She cannot believe that this is happening to her. And yet, she can. She does.
       I am in on it, but she still loves me. This made it easier for me because I could get her to tell me stories. I even mimicked her because I didn't know what to do. At one point, when a nurse was doing something she didn't like she said, "This is a change of subject, but where did you go to school?" and the nurse humored her and talked for a while about college and eventually forgot that she was supposed to get Granny to pee. I used that. When Granny would start to talk about being in restraints I would say, "Hey, this is a change of subject, but why did your parents move to Roseland?" and we'd be off. I learned a lot. I have no idea how much is true but I heard some wonderful stories.
       At one point she even told one about me. She said, "One of you girls was in an accident. I was there, at the hospital, and something was sticking in her head. She kept saying that her head hurt, her head hurt. And then it turned out that something was. It was her hairpins! They were sticking into her head!" "That was me, Granny," I said. "I was lying there all broken up and it was those damn hairpins that were irritating me the most." "Yes," she said, "I remember. I was there."
      She is very bitter, my Granny. Very angry. She is wrasslin' those demons of the past and blaming everyone and herself too. That is something I have to think about now. I don't want to end up like that, so bitter and blaming about things I could have changed. I need to seek satisfaction and contentment. I am luckier than her, I don't need to seek love, I just need to hold on to it. I need to understand my disappointments rather than swallow them and hold that poison. God forbid I blame those I love for my own sadness. I don't judge her for doing so. She taught me songs about fishes and how to wash my hair in a lake. She's teaching me this now. She made a lot of mistakes she didn't know how to rectify, and now she's stuck in a bed and all she has is time to think about that. It sucks. A lot.
        Today she said:
         "If it's this hard to die I don't think I'm going to make it."
          She's actually very strong. I love that quote, it's so her. I wrote it down when she said it to make sure I got her words right. Mama told me tonight that even though Granny wants to be cremated, she does want a stone somewhere saying that she was here, she existed. I think we should do that and inscribe it with her name and birth and death dates, and maybe the words, "She made it."
       Death is hard but we'll all make it eventually.
     I learned more hospital lessons today. Dirty jokes are okay. In the face of dementia and paranoia there are no right answers, but I Love You doesn't make you feel bad at least. If you are itchy they will give you lotion. Talking in a baby voice to a Grandma makes you sound like an ass. Bring your own coffee. Steal all the tape.
     We have good genes in our family. I told her, "You think you feel bad now? Think how you'll feel when you're 96! Or 106! Just wait 20 years and tell me about pain then!" This is not the end, not nearly. This is just the end of the beginning of all of this.

My Girl

Today is the day my babiest sister graduates from college. I don't know how that could have happened, not that it is strange that she has accomplished something like that, but that she could be old enough to do so. Isn't she a tiny girl, rollerskating around the house? Isn't she a little thing, packing a plastic suit case and declaring that she's off to Meximo City? Isn't she our baby girl? Isn't she our girl? I will not cry. (The tears are already in my eyes.) I've been crying for a week straight.
As the storms that swept through the south were just starting to kick up wisps of leaves and hints of what was to be such total devastation, I started to feel off. Irritable, ornery, sassy. I wanted to pick fights, I felt like I hated everyone who walked through the door at my work. I said mean things. I had to mentally restrain myself from dashing full plates to the floor and smashing water glasses. My arms longed to knock something over. Preferably something big that would make a very loud bang and would break in an irreparable way. Then came the tears.
I cried because people were leaving at work and I had to replace them and it was too hard. I cried because not only are they leaving, but they are going off to better and brighter things, and I stay here and what to them was a job to get them through school and supply them mad money for nights of vodka luge, new panties, and marijuana, appears to be my career. I cried because my man is so far away and loves his job so much. I cried because I'm getting old. I cried because my legs hurt so much. I cried because I have a cat and I do not pet her enough. (Seriously, just looking at her little face was enough to set me off.) I cried because I do not have a baby. I cried because I was on my period and oh the storm was building and my sister, my baby tiny little sunshine girl is leaving.
A couple of nights ago after she played at the restaurant, one of my co-workers said, "May, I think I have a crush on your sister." He said it real plain and earnest, and not teasing in any way. "Yes," I said, "She's a good one to have a crush on." and then we talked about how fine she is. Which is one of my favorite things to do.
Many years ago I started waxing poetic about her at a party in St. Augustine. I had had several glasses of wine at that point and I remember gesturing with both hands and saying how beautiful she was and how talented and how marvelous. My then boyfriend leaned over to me and whispered that no one cared, that I was embarrassing myself. I sank back into the couch exhausted and said, "I just love her so much." The funny thing about that is the people I was talking to, the people hosting the party, are the people who my sister now calls her Fairy Godparents and who love her almost as much as I do. Ha! Suck it, ex-boyfriend! It's not overly effusive if you have to be in order to be completely honest. Kiss my ass, I just love her so much.
My sister Jessie is very tall, and very talented, and very smart, and very beautiful. That's all true, but it's not enough. She has an angel's face, a perfect oval, with big blue eyes and a mouth that could have been painted in the Renaissance. She is Aphrodite, she is Diana, she is the Virgin Mary, she is one better, she is herself. Her fingers are delicate and tapered and I like to take her hand when I talk to her and hold it, and bring it up to my lips to kiss because even just that hand is so precious to me. When she is playing mandolin her face smooths and her body relaxes and it is like watching something intimate and magical and completely natural taking place, like the unfolding of a flower or a sunrise, so languid, so.... yes... sexy and yet not so, and then she smiles and the clouds you didn't know were there part and the sun bursts through. She shines so brightly sometimes I have to look away.
Her grace is something that is not just held in her body but also in the way she moves through life. She is graceful with people, she is graceful in situations that most would find difficult or uncomfortable. Children and animals follow her with blind love. She is the kind of girl you want near, just because her presence makes the air feel better. When she is around I know that everything will be okay, not because I need her to take care of things (though she does) but because when I look at her face I am soothed. She is balm, that girl.
Which is why it is so right that she is graduating from nursing school. I can't think of anyone I would rather have by my side if I was in pain, or afraid, or having a baby. She will be using those lovely hands to provide succor to those lucky enough to find themselves in her care. I almost envy their broken bones, I almost envy their labor pains. It is right, it is good, so is she.
She is in love. If I thought she was beautiful before (and she was and I did) now she is even more so and grows more lovely everyday. Could she be any more beautiful? She is so beautiful that only she could be a thing more beautiful than she is now, so I suppose that is possible. Maybe when she herself has a baby, as our sister Lily has and who has herself grown more astonishingly gorgeous since.
I am so glad that she is in love, and that she is doing exactly what she needs to do for herself and her life. They will be moving in together, in another town, in another state. They will make a home. They will nest. They will sleep well together. As I told her not too long ago, there is nothing that makes my heart happier or more at peace than knowing that her heart is taken care of. I believe this man will look after her heart. I believe he may love her enough to keep loving her and to love her more.
Now I am crying again because this is so big to me- this girl, her love, her accomplishments, my love for her. I am not heart broken that she is leaving, I am heart-mended, and I am finding that a full to bursting, happy heart can be just as painful as a broken one. I am so glad for her that I cannot stop weeping.
Jessie Girl- you are leaving but you are not leaving us. We travel in you as you ride in our hearts and minds, and it will always be that way. There is nothing you could ever do that would lessen my love for you and your absence will not cause your face to fade in my mind. You are imprinted in me, you are the wallpaper in my heart. I am so proud of you. I just love you so much. Now go be free, you sweet little thing.

I steal flowers, figs, and berries...

I see that I've lost a follower. That's fine, perhaps even good. Inspiration to write and less pressure. Not that anyone pressures me to write. Not that I don't love that anyone follows me. I'm amazed anyone does actually. I'm so spotty and dissatisfying.
I feel blindsided by this spring. By work. By love. Is it love that keeps me away from the keyboard? Is it love that is making this spring so crazy beautiful? I don't know. I don't want to stop writing, and I haven't actually. I just can't seem to finish anything.
This spring: first it was the Japanese Magnolias. I blame it on them. There were not blossoms and then there were, an explosion of blossoms, a proud of blossoms, a murder of them, and fat they were and dripping from trees. The smell was overwhelming and high inducing, and at one point I stood between two on a carpet of spent petals with the blue sky overhead and the buzzing of bees as loud as lawn mowers and I thought "Does it get better than this?".
But yes it does.
Then came the dogwoods. Snow. Snow with leaves, and tiny green centers, and gray zig-zag branches that alone would be enough. Then came the azaleas, regular and miniature, in all the bridesmaid colors. And then came the cherries and the pears (blossoms, not fruit), and tung, all fast and furious and garish and wonderful.
Add to that the birds that pass through these parts in such numbers that you wonder what it looks like in the place they eventually perch. Finches, wrens, blue jays, cardinals, geese, woodpeckers, yes. Those are the ones I can name. Bluebirds- I saw them at my boyfriend's mother's house. I said I'd never seen one, and there one was. There was one day while walking to work when I saw such a flock of birds, so many I had to stand and look and was late for all my standing but I did not care. I was on a canopy road and they filled the trees, all those great big Spanish moss dripping trees, they filled them and then lifted off, and then filled them and lifted off. Again and again, and when they took to the air they did so in a great scrawing formation. They made a blow fish in the air, and then a dragon, and then a bearcat, and then settled on down only to do it again. I could have stayed and watched for hours. I felt like calling in well, as Tom Robbins would say. "I'm sorry, I can't come into work. The birds. Yes. They are too beautiful." Some days it feels like a sin against God to go into work.
But that was months ago. Maybe two. It's all different now. Flower sex has caught, and everything is fecund. The first fruits are swelling, the mulberries are already ripe. Not quite fall-on-the-ground-and-stain-your-feet ripe, but ripe enough to pluck on the way to work and arrive red handed and berry mouthed. The fig trees smell like figs. The loquats and kumquats are heavy. We have a lemon tree at the restaurant that I've been promised is a rare variety that is so sweet you can eat the fruit off the branch. I miss the blossoms (they smelled like heaven) but I love the tiny green marbles that get bigger every day. I love that the pear trees have lost their petals because I cant wait to roast the pears in brown sugar and butter. Vanilla. Lemon zest. Ginger. When the world smells like honey how can you help but be hungry? I swear I gain 10 pounds every spring.
The roses are almost done, but the jasmine is blooming. Entire walls of it that proves that nature is the queen boss of us all because we know it will pull our fences down and yet we plant it there and let it go wild. Soon it will be so florid with tiny white pinwheels that the scent, when walking by, will make me feel so light headed and high that it will honestly make my knees go weak. I will want to sink to the ground. I will want to lie on the sidewalk. I will want to look at the sky spinning above my head. It is not the sky! It is the jasmine and the bees! I shall have to tell myself this firmly. I shall have to walk on. It does not do to lie on the sidewalk. Spring fever or no.
I can not remember a spring so beautiful. I forgot to mention the wisteria. And the honeysuckle. And the camellias. There are camellias that look like ripped open organs, tattered and fat and blood red. There are also those that look like roses or virginal fairy dresses. One for every lady. Maybe this is why we love them.
So love. Maybe it is love making everything smell so sweet. Or maybe it is love allowing me to be open to the spring, to the flesh of it and the beauty of it and the smell of it and the great great opening of it all. Just like a lonely girl eschews sex scenes in movies so does one turn a blind eye to spring. Non fate guerra al maggio, my friend. War not with May. And May is coming. So soon. In a couple of weeks. For the first time in a long time, I am looking forward to May, and accepting her as she may come.

My Yes Love Story

Chapter 1
It is the day he leaves and I am a mess. I am feeling my heart, and I don't know what to do with it. It is this cracked open, wet and heavy thing. It is inside my chest, but also in my belly, in my brain, in my fingertips. My eyes are wet as I serve brunch, because of course the day he leaves is a Sunday and brunch waits for no man. What do I care for your coffee? Your bloody mary? Your eggs well done and bacon crispy? I feel like Frida Kahlo with my ribs open, my heart blue and red, lurid on my chest. No one seems to notice. That night the sky is dressed for dancing and my fresh new skin is in love with the air. I stand outside and look up for a long, long time.

Chapter 2
Two days pass. I call my Mama and she tells me that a friend is dying. She asks me if I am in love. I don't know, I say, I don't know. All I want to eat is yogurt and soup. I am on the heartbreak yogurt and soup diet. I tell her that even though it's a broken-hearted feeling, I am glad to feel my heart again. It's about time someone turned the lights on, she says.

Chapter 3
I call him. I tell him how I feel. He sees my bet and raises. Rather than hide my beating heart I expose it, I open it's windows, I let the air in. I find that all the songs are true. We agree to start from here and get to know each other. We see each other as endlessly amazing, and inside that endlessness he sees I stretch out my arms and it feels good, and I wonder, How far can I go? And the rest is now, and the rest is now, and the rest is now.

My Almost Love Story, Succinctly Put, In Chapter Form

Chapter 1
We meet at a bonfire (was it a bonfire? perhaps a parade) at The Fives. He is my brother's neighbor and they have quite the little Bro-Town happening, of which my brother will later become the mayor, but not just yet. They are all buds. I think he is sexy, but what of sexy? I have a boyfriend, and I believe he disappears to have sex with some girl. It is a beautiful night. Later I hear he thought I was cute. I also hear he thinks my mom is cute.

Chapter 2
I see him unexpectedly at a show at the Cow Haus. I am surprised to see how happy he looks to see me at the same time as I am surprised to feel how happy I am to see him. His smile slays me. He gathers me up in his arms and hugs me so hard he lifts me off the floor. I don't remember what band was playing, but I remember that hug.

Chapter 3
It is some years later and my life has fallen apart. I no longer have old boyfriend, or any boyfriend, or a job, or a place to live. I have just abruptly left a dangerous relationship and I am lost and ashamed and determined to A) get myself together, and B) drink enough to forget what I have just been through. My brother scrambles to get me into the safety of The Fives, where the brotherhood can keep an eye on me. The man of whom this is about is now my across the sidewalk neighbor and he also enjoys drinking, so we spend many wasted nights talking and talking and talking. We kiss at a pirate party. I say "Kiss me." and he does.
Sometimes he knocks on my window at sunrise for a ride to work.
He moves out. I keep his cat for one day.

Chapter 4
I still live at The Fives. I am still a mess. He calls one night and says, "This is it, let's get together, I want to see you." He comes over and we make out, but before we close the deal he leaves in such a hurry he left his shirt. I am confused and worry he will be cold.
He moves away from town.

Chapter 5
It is a year later and I have moved out of The Fives and into the apartment wherein I currently reside. I have quit drinking and have started to get myself together. Really, finally. It is after New Years and I have just gotten home from a work holiday party and he calls. He is in town visiting, and the people whose couch he is staying on are having a very loud argument. I ask if he would like to come over. I make up my couch.
We talk. We talk far into the night about getting our lives together, how great our families are, what we are up to these days. We make each other laugh. His face makes me happy. I go to bed alone, and wake up glad that he is in my house. The next day he leaves, and we promise to keep in touch.

Chapter 6
Thanksgiving and he is in town to visit his family. He comes to my apartment and a pop song about love is playing. He walks through my door, takes me in his arms, and kisses me. The music swells. He sleeps over.
Same thing happens around Christmas.

Chapter 7
It is Thanksgiving again and he calls. I am at my Mama's house for the ever fabulous pre-Thanksgiving party. I say, "Come out, if you want to." He does. Out by the bonfire he tells me that now is the time. He loves me, he wants to be with me, we can make this happen. I walk him around Mama's house and he loves it. He loves her. He loves my brother. He sees my sister playing mandolin with her band and is now a fan for life, he films them with his phone he cannot believe how amazing they are. He keeps his hands on me, we keep looking at each other.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas we talk on he phone almost everyday. We will make this happen, We can make this happen, we say over and over. I feel like something is off, though I can't say what. If there's anyone I would jump off a cliff with it's him, but still.... I'm wary. I don't know why he likes me so much. I don't think I am beautiful so I don't trust him when he says I am. Why now? I think.
Christmas comes and we spend one night together. Then family time and I meet his mom on Christmas day. Also his sister, his brother-in-law, and his nephews. They are all wonderful. Just the best people you could meet. I sit on the floor with his Mom and we talk. I play with his nephews. They make me feel comfortable. It is very sweet and easy. I see how he is with his family and he is a boy and there is so much love there.
That night is his last night in town and he is going to go have a beer with his best friend and then come to my house and climb in bed with me. He never shows up. I feel like an idiot in my chilly silky nothings, and he calls to apologize on his way out of town. I say it's alright, I understand.
Then I call the next day or the day after that and say that it is not alright and nothing is alright and I am breaking up with you. It was his birthday. I am so mean.
I was not ready. I don't think he was ready either. You don't start forever with an apology.

Chapter 8
We don't talk for a while. Half a year maybe. Then he calls, says he's coming to town. We talk about getting together. I don't call back. Or I do, but I get the dates wrong and it is the day he is leaving. We do this a couple/three more times.
(I really did get the dates wrong. That wasn't on purpose.)

Chapter 9
He emails me, says he'd like to see me before he "really gets out of pocket". My heart drops. He has planned a grand culinary tour of the country, cooking in some of the best restaurants for the best chefs. It will go on for a couple of years, and then who knows? He visits for Christmas and we see each other at my brother's house for maybe an hour. Then he comes back to town for a week and a half before he leaves for good. I am still wary, still confused. I am happy for him, I am angry with him, I am being a silly girl. Finally, when he only has a few days left we get together.
He takes me to Tom Brown Park where we sit on the grass and remember how much we like each other. We are the funniest, smartest, sexiest people we know. We like to sit on the grass. The sky has never been so blue. I cry a tiny bit while trying to explain something. I laugh more. He tells me that he is sorry, he went too fast last year. We look away, at all that beautiful Florida day. The sky gets in my eyes. When I get home I look in the mirror and I am beautiful.
The next night he comes to a birthday party. We sit next to each other and he rests his arm along the back of my chair. I peek at him. I catch him peeking at me. Everyone is leaving the pizza restaurant to go to a bar and I bow out. He offers to drive me home. I accept. At home, in my parking lot, we kiss.
We kiss and it wakes up all my sleeping cells, he makes my insides quick. Oh, I think, it's been a while. I'd forgotten.
Then he leaves because he has agreed to drive everyone to the bar. He's good like that.
The next day he drives away for good, and all I can think about is that I didn't smell him enough.

A Day Today

I am glue. I am duct tape. I am glue. I repeat this to myself all day, like a mantra. I am glue. I am duct tape. I can help hold together the machine, but it is not my job to fix it, nor can I change the intrinsic nature of the machine. I am glue.
It has been a day. A day and a half of a day and still a double at work tomorrow and brunch (oh fuck a bunch of brunch) on Sunday, and I have yet to have my supper. (Which is soup. Which is simmering on the stove. I love soup. I love it so much I think I'll marry it.) I fired someone today.
I should say WE fired someone, because I am not the boss (I am glue) but I am the manager and I hired the man so it fell to me (I am duct tape) to let him go.
It was like breaking up with someone I never really liked in the first place. It was something I wanted to do, something I needed to do, but not a comfortable thing, no, and dreams were shattered. His dream of having a job. His dream of having a job where he could play with his phone all day, come in late, and disappear for long periods of time for whatever reason to do whatever it is he did. He asked for another chance. He was shocked, confused, hurt. He said he didn't understand, and that this was so unexpected. An hour after he left he called and asked again if there was anything he could do to change my mind. No, I said. I am sorry, I said.
There is that, and then there is this illness that is going around. Our sous chef was out sick and told me today that he threw up thirty times on Tuesday night. Thirty times! I did not ask if he actually kept count, although that is what I was thinking. Not that I didn't believe him but that is a pretty high number, and you'd think you would lose track around ten or so. He also said that he had a 103.9 fever. I told him that I was glad he was not brain damaged, and he concurred. His mother, our lady boss, has also been sick, which is why there was a reservation taken for 15 people in a private room for today at noon and no one told me. (I am glue.) Generally, when there is a private party on the books I schedule another server to take care of them. Today I took the party, as well as tables in the dining room and on the patio. The luncheon was a meeting of judges, and God forbid I ever get arrested (again) and have to stand before one of them because surely they will remember how I was tardy in refilling the iced tea and took forever to get their checks. There's a certain amount of pressure to get checks to people anyway, but when those people are expected in court, it ups the ante a bit.
The day shift ended as smoothly as it could, considering, and then the dinner crew started showing up. I sat and worked on the schedule for Thanksgiving week. I talked to the bosses about how the firing went, and how the judges were. I talked to the servers about the change of staff. A chef needed to talk about a hostess who sassed him. Our bar manager wanted an ear for her troubles with the bar staff. I explained to our new manager? office manager? assistant manager? about why it is necessary to put people on a wait sometimes, even when there are empty tables. I worked on the schedule some more. I made phone calls and cajoled the people who are not going out of town to work doubles over that weekend. I even made up a song about it to make it seem more fun. I said, over and over again, It will be Fine. It will be Great. I said Thank you, I love you. I filled in the head chef about the goings-on and we talked for a bit about his mom, who had passed early this week. It is very sad, and I told him that I was sorry to bring it up during dinner service but I didn't want to pretend I didn't know or that it did not happen. He said that it was alright, he thinks about it all the time anyway, and we agreed that it is nice to say things out loud. I hugged him, and I had never hugged him before, and it was sweet and funny.
I also hugged one of the hostesses when I saw her in the hallway as she came in and we both leaned into each other and sighed. She is a hostess, but she is also my baby sister's best friend and she is one of my little girls and her tiny bones are precious to me. It was good to see her face.
When our new server showed up to train for dinner I said, Hello Sexy-Pants! Come here so I can sexy your pants! Which doesn't make sense but makes sense for us because we have worked together before at another restaurant. To another server I said, No more talking. I don't even want to see your lips moving as if you are talking. Come move your face into my hand so I can slap you without moving my hand. Then I said, I love you. I am leaving now. And I hugged him too.
Then it was time for me to leave and so I walked around gathering my things and I hugged all the other servers. I told them all thank you, and I wished them a good night. I hope everyone is nice and you make lots of money. That is what we tell each other, and we laugh because we know not everyone will be nice and the money will be what it is on a chilly night a week before Thanksgiving.
There are things I can do, and there are things I cannot do. I can listen when people need to say what is resting heavy in them. I can reassure and be calm, even when I know that we will get our asses handed to us as we often do. I can work like a beast. I can tell people I love them. I can do that. And that is something that is not in my job description but it is something that, when said and meant, establishes loyalty and trust. They know that I will never ask something of them that I am not willing to do myself. I tell them they are beautiful, because they are so beautiful.
Here is the thing (I am duct tape): if you do your job well, people will tell you and thank you, but if you do your job really well, they will hardly notice what you do at all. That is the goal. That is the prize. To move through a space all the way to the end and touch but to not leave a mark, and when it is time to walk through the door everyone is smiling. I can't always do this, but when I can it is so fine.