(I was never one to cry a lot. As I have gotten older I am a bit more weepy, but still try to hide that fact for the most part. The one thing that will make me tear up with almost no control to stop it, is seeing tears in someone else’s eyes.)
I didn’t realize anyone could move so slow. Being a fast walker myself and one who goes at full speed most of the time, it was straining me to move so slowly. I had no choice.
When the crowd became too large and our way was blocked, I tried to run interference so he could get through. While my son does that for me in crowds, I was not having as much success. My son’s imposing six foot four inch frame inspired people to clear a path for him on the football field and still does in day to day life. Tucking in behind him and getting through a crowd always seems easy.
My slight frame does not inspire anyone to get out of the way so we were trapped by a sea of humanity. I thought eventually someone would notice the old man trying to get by but no one did, each person too absorbed in their own conversations.
I decided to walk the long way around and get to the other side of the wall of people that blocked our way, hoping I could then reach back and will him through. When I got in front of the crowd I looked back and for an instant lost him.
Then someone leaned their head just enough for me to see him. And what I saw in that split second was enough to bring tears to my eyes.
In that split second I saw someone who was lost. Not as in he didn’t know where he was, although I can’t be sure he knew. He was lost from anything familiar to him. He saw no one he recognized as the companion who brought him had wondered away and I had plowed through the crowd trying to figure a way for him to get through.
In that split second I could see tears well up in his eyes and his chin tremble. He glanced around, looking terrified. Not so much scared of the crowd as of what he had become. He was feeble, something he had never seen in himself.
Men, especially men of that generation, are taught to be tough, not to show emotion, not to be weak. Having been an army ranger, an officer, it was trained into him to never give up. And yet here he was, stopped in his tracks, confused, surrounded by laughing, talking people that were unfamiliar, weak and feeble and unsure of what to do next, where to turn, how to proceed.
In that split second I realized that he was perhaps seeing how far he had fallen in such a short time and how he wasn’t just unsure of where to turn this instant but how to go on at all. For the first time ever I saw vulnerability on his face and my instinctual response was to tear up myself, to try to protect.
The crowd shifted again and I lost him, so I headed back towards where he was stuck and came up beside him. I touched his arm and he seemed startled.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
Quickly the tears disappeared and he looked at me and said, “Oh, sure.” in the maddening way he has of making you feel as if you had lost your mind for ever thinking he wasn’t totally in control of the situation.
I guided him back through the maze of people and finally got he and his friend to the door and headed home. I walked back into the lobby and got the glass of wine I hadn’t planned on having. I thought about how we never plan to be in that position- old, weak, lost, confused. We never see our parents there until they suddenly arrive, we never see our friends or ourselves as ever being “like that.” No, not us!
I saw the terror in the eyes of someone who had the sudden realization that they were there, at that place where they never thought they could be, and had no idea how to proceed. It was only a split second glimpse, but it was sad and frightening all at once.
So I took my wine, went back to the quiet theatre and cried.
