“I am invisible,” Helen once announced through broken, missing teeth. She was round and flowing, like some ancient “Venus” figurine, the embodiment of female voluptuousness, yet too weathered to seem attractive. She had a stain on her shirt, and on her thigh. A hole under her left sleeve revealed a patch of soft, white hairless flesh. The roots of her hair betrayed her too, and small misshapen islands of crimson clung to her fingernails like some unkempt little girl. She was far from invisible. Nor was she derelict, but rather, she drove a fairly new Volkswagen, and her clothes, though not cared for, were clearly chosen with a nod towards fashion trends.
“I seem to be a barometer of people’s hearts,” she said quietly, “because those who can see me, who don’t ignore me, are the one’s who see deeper than the surface of things.” Since I first met her almost two years ago, Helen has often made statements that have hung in the air between us. But she didn’t divulge such intimacies right away.
Helen was the very first customer to Nectar, before we had really opened our doors. Her weekly visits to the store since have become something I look forward to, intuiting that she is offering up lessons as if she is some twisted funhouse mirror into which I must gaze to be reminded that truth is perception, and just as tricky. In many ways she has become one of my best teachers.
That first day together when she ambled into my shop, I was wedged between piles of boxes, pricing new inventory. Though I explained the store was not yet open, she shooed away my lack of readiness, as if an old friend that had just arrived unannounced and cozied up on the foot of my bed. Maybe the lack of formality was a welcome to her. In either case, I had no choice but to oblige for I didn’t want to appear unfriendly.
She walked slowly through the store, saying things like, “I love the textures and colors of the walls. They remind me of a spice market. You can just feel that everything here is made by hand.” She commented on the way things were displayed, noticing each object and surface with the eyes of an artist. After studying everything with relish, she settled on a large, cheerfully embroidered stuffed elephant, hand-sewn in India. An extravagant gift for her young granddaughter.
It was $90.00, a price that was a challenge for her and she said so without shame. I wasn’t insulted by her desire to “hondle,” an art I myself had grown up learning under my mother’s tutelage at flea markets and yard sales all along the East Coast. Though perhaps unorthodox dealings for a retail store, we settled on $75.00. I was happy to make a first sale to someone who was grateful of her purchase.
She stayed for a few minutes longer, dropping names of locals I might also know. It didn’t take long to connect the dots, a game people in Ulster County do often, as if to validate their experiences, and to declare, I AM ROOTED HERE. There were in fact, many dear friends of mine she knew well, though I quickly realized they didn’t always share the same glowing perceptions of each other. Her name and reputation had, in fact, preceded her. There was no mistaking the descriptions. I wondered what was it about this woman that made so many people talk about her, even to someone who had never met her? She had a powerful effect on others, but unfortunately it wasn’t always a positive one.
“Helen corners you,” one friend explained once very dramatically with a guffaw. “I mean she literally corners you. She talked without pause, wedging me in between the fruit and the check out area at The Co-Op and I had nowhere to move until she let me! She is completely insensitive to what you might be doing, or your sense of space and time.”
Another said, “I rented the apartment above hers in her house. If she wasn’t complaining that my food smelled too good– whining that it made her hungry all the time and she was gaining weight because of it—she was barging in and talking incessantly without any sense of my privacy, space, and my needs.”
I decided I would forge my own opinion. Which sadly, perhaps somewhat tainted by others’ opinions of her, quickly echoed theirs as her visits soon became more frequent and even lengthier. Yet that is what my store has been about since its inception: visits and community. Visitors browse the store, and often settle round the table and exchange stories over a cup of tea. And for most, the experience is so “unusual” or “inspiring” that they return often. So why was I also soon dreading the sight of her car?
“I’m a painter,” she said confidently one day, though I knew she supported herself mainly through graphic design as best she could. She might blame her lack of work on a sliding market. “I would love it if you looked at my work,” she said. Before Helen left that day, she wrote down her website so that I might consider her paintings to display in the store.
As I perused the site something magical began to happen. Light and brush strokes seized subjects sensitively: a child’s wonder, a quirky celebration of a bride and groom’s union, disarmed artist types in the throes of a party, the masking and unmasking of abandon at a Mardi Gras parade. Helen not only saw like an artist; she was one. She had a rather strong body of work. And her bio touted the fact that she was not simply working intuitively, but rather with some knowledge of art and its traditions. She had earned a BFA and an MFA. And as our conversations soon expanded on the subjects of art and photography, I discovered that she was a frequent visitor on the local art gallery circuit. Though she may have complained about many things, Helen was passionate about art.
And that is the bridge that led us to the beginnings of an unusual friendship: though we have yet to visit one another’s house, we have learned to be unabashedly honest. Not brutally, but rather with kindness, with a kind of honesty that grows out of two strangers having nothing to lose.
When I witnessed the light that took possession of her when she spoke of art, and then later of her granddaughter, I realized that this woman who seemed so seeped in negativity, had the potential, and the desire, for much, much more. And she is smart, knowledgeable not about only art, but also nutrition, alternative medicine, politics, food. And it didn’t take long to learn that even though she may be struggling to apply some of her wisdom to her own life, she is actually a soul searcher and a genuinely good person.
But what I have come to love most about Helen is that she embodies so many of the traits we try to ignore in ourselves, the things we are all capable of on a daily basis: abusing ourselves, taking our bodies for granted, not taking responsibility for why our lives are a mess. Don’t we all feel ugly sometimes? Don’t we all sometimes act insensitively to others, to their feelings, or their sense of space, and time? Don’t we all want to blame others for the paths our lives have taken? Helen is like a road sign for all that we want to deny is sitting in very own laps, taking hold of our lives. The things we want to pretend don’t exist for us because we might do a better job of hiding those frailties, those flaws. Yet don’t we all learn best from the struggles that lay in our paths? What if Helen is merely the embodiment of Buddha nature as we all are, pure of heart, and yet imperfect, struggling towards fulfillment?
No, I think Helen is the furthest from invisible. She is so loud in her humanness that we must stop and pay attention and that makes most people uncomfortable. Perhaps in a time before plastic surgery, back before the media made us all so self conscious of our physicality and how our shitty lives measured up to the glamorous ones, people were left alone to live with their eccentricities: their 26 cats, the moles and pock marks and missing teeth and furies. Back before everyone had to have decorum and be politically correct and homogenized. Back before we were all supposed to look and act like each other, and live in the same big, clean, fabulous house with your 2.1 beautiful, smiling children.
But I’ve strayed from my story, that is Helen’s story, or where our two stories intersect and collide…
There was one day Helen visited when I was buried in papers and bills sprawled across my table. My busyness was too obvious to ignore and I excused myself, making it clear that I didn’t have time for one of our more languid visits.
“I was driving by,” she said smiling comfortably. “I just finished showing someone a house. I just wanted to say a quick hello.”
“Hi Helen,” I said. I noticed I said this from my perch on the bench, far from where she stood in the doorway, and even though I was busy, I took note silently that there are certain friends for whom I would always stop what I was doing and greet them properly with a kiss and a hug. For whom I showed more enthusiasm. I didn’t like that I would be so preferential in my treatment and surprised myself with the realization that I was a judgmental person, even if I wanted to deny it. I got up, walked towards her and leaned in to give her a kiss and a warm, heartfelt hug. She was a great hugger actually, put her whole being into it, and received my warmth with such gratitude. I thought, so much nicer to hug someone with a little meat on her bones, especially one so unexpectedly loving. In fact, she comforted me tremendously. There I thought I was being generous, but it was I that needed to be taken out of my busy, ultimately meaningless tasks. I was the one that needed to be shown something in myself I do not want to own up to. I realized I even needed a hug.
“That was nice, I get so few hugs these days,” Helen offered. There was nothing needy in this admission. Just honesty, and I welcomed it. I walked her outside to her car, or perhaps it is she who led me out to the gift of the sun.
“I know you’re busy,” she said, “But I wanted you to know that if any of your friends from the city or up here are looking for a graphic designer, I would be so grateful if you recommended me.” There was a pregnant pause, the silence that I was supposed to fill with, “Sure. I’ll give them your number,” or some such phrase delivered with sincerity. But I didn’t. Or at least I didn’t until it was uncomfortably too late. Except that unbelievably, so bravely, rather than take offense, she seemed to know what I was thinking. As if she could see herself not as I did, as Helen this woman I had come to love, but as they would, as unforgiving New Yorkers and suspended by the superficial.
She looked down and stared at the seemingly obligatory stains on her own disheveled shirt. “I wouldn’t look like this,” she said. “I would dress up, put on some nicer clothes.” I let those words echo for both of us. I waited until I measured my own, careful not to offend, hoping I too might sometimes be the teacher.
“It’s for you, Helen that you should want to look nice. Not for anyone else. Your body is your temple, and if you disrespect it, then you show you are not worthy of anyone else’s respect either.” I said this slowly, doling out the words as I would for a wise child.
Cars whizzed by on Rte. 213, unaware. I was hot under the bright sun, and my pile of bills was waiting for me. Maybe I had no right to be so honest. Maybe some things are better left well alone, as someone’s grandmother once said. Still, there was an unspoken tenderness knitting the spaces between us, palpable and kind.
“Thank you,” she said, looking me square in the eyes. And then she started the ignition, turned onto the road and out of sight.
When I arrived home that evening, there was a phone message from Helen.
“I thought about what you said and wanted to thank you again,” she said sincerely. “It was very emotional for me. You know, I guess most people learn that lesson from their mother or father. But no one ever taught me that before. I really like that you were letting me know it’s for me, and not others that I should care. Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. See you at Nectar one of these days.”
Several weeks passed before Helen next visited. Then she appeared with a batch of homemade holiday cookies for me to enjoy with my employees, Neslihan and Jessica.
“I bake these every year for friends,” she began. Yes, friends, I thought quietly.
Customers came in and milled about the store, asking questions, and keeping me intermittently occupied. Helen sat and drank her tea patiently. After some time, there was a clearing and I sat down to join her at the table. I noticed some obvious changes: Helen sported a new haircut, a touch of lipstick and some mascara, and a very flattering, unblemished outfit. And she was smiling, a lot.
“You seem really happy today,” I said.
“I just had such a nice visit with a friend,” she explained. “She seems fulfilled, has a good business. I went to her house, which was so beautiful, very clean and organized. I mean no messes anywhere. It felt like a sanctuary, and it really inspired me. I thought about my own home, the piles everywhere, how I have collected and held onto so much shit. My dining table is filled with papers; just stuff all over. And who can I blame? My husband is gone, my kids are grown and don’t live with me now. So I asked my friend, “How do you keep your house like this? It feels so good, but where’s all the stuff?”
“My friend said, “I have a mantra. It’s: I MUST COMPLETE THIS TASK. I apply it to everything in my life. If I take something out, I put it away when I’m done. If I begin a project, I see it through. I don’t let myself get distracted, I just try to keep this goal in mind. It helps.”
“Beautiful, and simple, huh, Jenny?” Helen asked, smiling brightly.
“Yes, a keeper,” I said. I wrote the mantra down in my journal to ponder later. This gem would then work its way into many conversations over the next weeks, doled out to others who seemed to need it in their lives too, as Helen and I had.
We all work magic through each other, don’t we?
I poured myself a cup of tea, and then noticed Helen was smiling more broadly and often than I had seen her before. She was radiant.
“Oh my God, Helen, did you have your teeth fixed?” I whispered with excitement.
“You know I realized that while I thought my teeth didn’t bother me, I was actually afraid to smile,” she confided. “Now I just feel better.” The skin of negativity seemed to have been shed. She was washed in gratitude and excitement, no longer invisible at all.
Driving away from Nectar one recent afternoon, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of excitement and gratitude for the unfolding warm days ahead. Spring in the Hudson Valley is truly an extraordinary thing to behold-- something long awaited, something seemingly earned after slogging through the arduous days of snow shoveling and a starker landscape. True, this winter was freakishly mild, and yet, spring is another magical thing entirely. And so I began to free associate what spring really is for me, and words unfurled before me as I whipped over the beautiful roads towards home: Green. Budding. Beauty. Color. Rebirth. Fun. So many more, streaming out like water, like sunlight.
magic.
