Do Our Lives Count?

Twenty years into the future

They walked down the leave strewn path around the park and small mall. The man wore a ball cap with the Detroit Tigers logo on it with his pure white hair trimming the bottom edge of the navy blue cap. He had on a zipped up sweatshirt and a pair of dress slacks with some off brand white tennis shoes. The slacks were covering some calf-high support socks that helped his aged heart circulate the blood back up out of his legs. The problem was, it made his feet cold. He was also carrying his wife’s purse. When her arthritis acted up, she couldn’t close her hands and grip anything, including her own purse.  When they were younger, she use to carry big purses, of bright colors—big enough to carry shoes in, maybe a sweater and so colorful, her husband joked for years about the purses being rescue beacons the Coast Guard could see for miles. But as the years progressed, the heaviness of it hurt her shoulders.  Over the years, the purses got progressively smaller and more subdued in color.

But not that subdued.

He didn’t mind helping her. He never minded carrying his wife’s ‘luggage’ he would call it to his friends. He had been doing it for the last decade, or has it been two decades? He had lost count.  At his age, he always lost count.

She was wearing a light sweater and slacks to match. She wore gloves because her circulation was not getting any better and her hands were constantly cold. She had a cotton scarf around her neck and an ear ‘cozy’ he called it around her ears, a headband skiers used. The cold wind would bother her ears.  She would often stuff chunks of cotton in them to help keep them warm when the two of them went out. He made her wear the cozy because when they went into a restaurant, she would pull out the cotton, if she remembered she had them in, and place them on the table. Chunks of cotton, sitting in his wife’s ears, now sitting on the table they were going to eat on, bothered him.  The thought of ear wax made him squeamish even though his wife, as well as himself, were always impeccably dressed and clean. When he was younger, there were times he would shower three times a day, but the ear wax thing bothered him.   It always has.  Clowns bothered him as well. Not a lot else bothered the man, but ear wax and clowns did. Ear wax in clowns’ ears was beyond comprehension. 

They loved to window shop or go see a movie and then go and sit in the window seats of one of the restaurants or near the splash pad area in the center of the quarter and watch people and their children play in the water. She would drink an iced tea and he would drink a diet soda. The sugar wasn’t good for his stomach, even though he overlooked the sodium. Sometimes they would go an hour without saying anything, then she would say something. It was always her that started the conversation—always.

They just knew.

They got married when he came back from Vietnam. They met when he was a math teacher at an inner city school and she was  a counselor.  He stuck his head in her office, a random decision, and asked if she had any gum. She frowned and then went into her side drawer and pulled out a pack of Beemans. Thinking no one else in the world liked the black licorice taste. He has been chewing it ever since. She always carried a pack in her ‘luggage’.

 They walked down the sidewalk, looking at nothing and seeing everything. It was their grandchild’s graduation from high school. They had some cards and a present to buy.

Now, in the twilight years of their lives, as the young people passed them on the sidewalk, listening to their headphones or texting on their cell phones, they were oblivious to the old ones who seemed invisible to them, sometimes a little irritated as they had to change their own course on the wide sidewalk to navigate around the slower, old people. If the world Author could have whispered in the old one’s ears, the words would have spoken about the person just walking next to you—was treated successfully for cancer by a former student of yours. The young man on the skateboard, who almost ran you over, was the grandchild of a student who was pregnant and wanted to quit high school, but you encouraged her to stay and finish. You never knew it but she then went to community college and was one of two mothers who graduated in the same class as their children from ASU. But the words were silent. There were three more at that small mall, who the Author would be able to speak about the old ones’ influence.

 The two moved down the walk and found a table on the patio of a bar that specialized in the couple’s favorite food. He pulled out her chair and helped her sit down then went over and stood in line, getting her favorite, orange chicken and white rice. He got the same only without the rice. It was the same order they’ve had for decades. There they sat and ate, watching the world move around them. There were others like them, hundreds even in the mall, but the two just sat and ate and watched, occasionally commenting and pointing about inane things. They were happy, just the two of them.

The world was a better place for having known such as these.