It Isn’t Me

People tell me about their traumatic brain injuries within 60 seconds of shampooing my hair. My roots are smeared with blackberry dye, but my eyes are open for business. My mother says I should charge in ten-minute increments, but I tip the shampoo girl 20%.

I underestimate human age so reliably that people factor this into my descriptions. “Angela said he’s fifty, so he just signed up for Medicare.” There was a singular exception. My upstairs neighbor was proud to tell me he was seventy-three. I’d pegged him as eighty. My mother solemnly worried, “that man must be dying.”

In the cosmic spreadsheet, my most uttered phrase is, “this world needs more people like you.” I say it as a fundraiser for the animal shelter. I am still flummoxed after sixteen years of opening checks for diabetic cats. Pensioners donate $7/month because they can’t afford $10. “Kiss those babies for me.” This work borders the burning edge of mysticism. This world is not worthy of people who weep and rejoice for feral strangers.

I say it in the self-checkout line, when the man with the braid picks up a stranger’s fallen spinach. “This world needs more people like you.” I say it in the email when Customer Service responds in an hour. “This world needs more people like you.” I say it to my friends, to the point that they hear it in their sleep, which is the entire point.

I say nothing at all, and strangers take me by the elbow. I am built like a bird who had insufficient suet in her formative years. Perhaps my bones look like knobs. Someone has reached for their handle on life today, same as every other morning, but today it broke off in their hand. I am not frightening, so they grip me.

They whisper diagnoses as they hand me the long white flag of a CVS receipt. They shout secrets over the vacuum. They brush dying cats in my office and tell me that knitting makes them feel alive. They ask me to pray for their daughter, or “keep a good thought” for the terrier whose weight keeps going down, down, down.

They don’t know me, but they have grasped me since my bones were new. I used to write it all down and squeeze my eyes shut to summon their faces. I wrote names on strips of paper like curly fortunes, pulling them from a wicker basket one by one. I dared not forget to plead mercy for the grandson or the failing hardware store. They didn’t know me. They had left things in my keeping.

When they know me, they forget themselves. “I’m not like this with anyone else,” my favorite volunteer sighs. “Really, trust me. I’m horribly self-indulgent with you. How are you, anyway?” I tell her she is one of the kindest people I know. I tell her this world needs more people like her, and she looks thirty-five. She opens her next storybook.

Our graphic designer italicizes neonatal dreams between drafts of flyers. “I haven’t told my husband about this yet.” He wants to sell photographs of stately dandelions. He has lain upon his back a hundred afternoons, supervising the toddler while snapping small worlds. Would someone buy a little book of these? Is he childish or childlike? I tell him he is both, and I beg him not to change.

My endocrinologist books me for a double visit so he can tell me he is an angel investor for an off-Broadway show. He tells me he’s not a spiritual guy, but would I pray? Do such things rise to the level of prayerworthy? They rise, I swear.

My mother says this happens because my Cheerios were wet with empathy. From five to ten, I accompanied her to college, learning about abnormal psychology and active listening and the man who would not dare to eat a peach. I had a weepy father, gentle grandparents, and a church of broad-shouldered Dutch Reformed reminding me of the “least of these.” I believed by twelve that I had the most blessings on the block. Blessed are those who hand them out like Milky Ways.

My counselor says this happens because I walk among mirrors. My eyes are kaleidoscopes, and each turn reveals a fresh fractal of myself. My ninth Thanksgiving scooped a lump of chronic illness on my plate. I have not forgotten. I know everyone is hurting. I know that knobs come loose without warning. I beseech people before they reach for me. I have a need to believe all people are my people.

I say this is because I’m a writer, forgetting that my reading glasses are on top of my head. I assume I have been called to bear witness. But the first beatitude is to behold.

No surgery will remove my cataracts. I stain the glass. I see saints in heathered hoodies and crisp bow ties. I quake before angels with frizzy eyebrows. I don’t ask, but they answer. I tell them what I know. I am too shy to be intrusive, too wild to Windex my excess.

I am in love with them all, which makes me foolish. I am in love in all directions, which makes people young. I am in danger of loving before I have all the ingredients. I will err in this direction until the last words leave me.

I am scheduled to have my roots touched up, and I will tip off the shampoo girl to the fact that she is shining. I have bloodwork scheduled next week, and I will remind Lady Vampira – she told me this is her name – that her jokes are salty sustenance to all patients.

I talk to my mother every morning, and I cannot talk her into the fact that she is a saint in Skechers who still looks fifty-five. I need to buy yogurt, and I need to tell Gabe the checkout man that his pompadour is heckin’ awesome, and his smile is frickin’ brave.

I need to write about them all while I have time, breathless insistence that light works all shifts. I assign them pen names and assault their humility. I send their feats to literary journals. The world will know what I know.

I don’t need to know how I “got like this.” I have the most blessings on the block.

Angela Townsend is Development Director at Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary, where she bears witness to mercy for all beings. She has an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary and B.A. from Vassar. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Cagibi, Fathom Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, LEON Literary Review, and The Razor, among others. Angie loves life dearly.