One morning this past week I was at the gym. Part of a strip mall, there’s a supermarket at one end, a hair salon at the other, and in between a dialysis center, a laundromat, a pizza place (take-out only), and my gym. One of the embarrassing but marketable features of a strip-mall gym is the row of windows fanning the entire front wall, giving everyone passing by on the outside a full view of what is going on inside. So, when I’m straining to lift a 15 lb. dumbbell, the guy who is dropping his dirty underwear on his way across the parking lot can see me, and I can see him.
Anyway, one morning this past week I was in the gym, waking my legs up by riding on one of the stationary bikes. Beside me was my friend, Amy. Outside the window we could see a woman making her way across the parking lot. Judging by her appearance, she was elderly. Her hair was silvered, her walk, slow and stilted. Rounding out at less than 5 feet, she reminded me of my late grandmother. In her hand, I could see that she was carrying something, and whatever it was, it had her full attention. Amy and I figured she had to be heading towards the hair salon, but as she got closer and closer to the building, she seemed to be getting closer and closer to us. Then, sure enough, she walked into the gym.
Being closest to the door, I said, “Hi. Can I help you?” That’s when she showed me what was in her hand—an iPhone. To be exact, it was a newer model iPhone than my own. Not that I was jealous. Most days I would gladly send my phone down river in return for some good old-fashioned human-to-human contact. I was more confused, because it was clear she didn’t know the first thing about how to work an iPhone. “My daughter bought this for me. She says they call it a smartphone, but it seems pretty dumb to me. I’m trying to get it to tell me how to get somewhere.” “Where are you trying to get to?” I was near certain that wherever it was, it wasn’t the gym. “To my doctor’s office for an appointment.”
It was in that moment that I detected an accent. I’m no expert, but it sounded non-British European to me. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before, because when I was a kid, my grandmother, the same one who rounded out at less than 5 feet high, had a best friend named Anne. Anne lived three doors down from my grandmother and they did everything together. Church, grocery shopping, Tuesday morning knitting club, Friday evening card playing. They even went on vacations together, only sometimes to take along their husbands. Though Anne wasn’t family, we all called her Aunt Anne, and she too had an accent, the same sounding one as the woman now standing before me in the gym. I knew Anne’s accent as belonging to a woman who, as a very young girl, had been sent by her parents from France, with her three sisters, to go live in the United States, far away from the occupying threat of Hitler and the Nazis. This was a story Anne not only never shied away from telling but was bold to tell, making sure everyone, and especially all us kids, understood that, though she came to the U.S. in 1940 under immigrant status, had the U.S. not been an ally in the Great War, she would have been considered a refugee instead. “We don’t always get to decide what we are. Most of the time, other people are going to decide for us,” she would say. “Remember this, because you live in a part of the world where you are probably going to get to decide for others.”
I did not ask the woman with her iPhone 17 where she had gotten her accent, though I did wonder how far she had come to get to where she was. I don’t mean to the gym. I mean how far she had come to now be standing there with me in the town she calls home, but still not be able to find her way to her doctor’s. I wondered if she had had to flee her country once upon a time. Was she a refugee, an immigrant, a legal? What had to happen for a woman, any woman, to wind up in a place where she must pull into a strip mall and ask a stranger for directions? Did her daughter know where her mother was? Lost. In that moment a certain irony came to me. This woman, who was trying to get someplace, and might already have been there if not for her dumb smartphone, was clearly no stranger to finding her way in this world. Meanwhile, the speedometer on my stationary bike said I had already gone 1.2 miles, yet I hadn’t moved an inch.
“Where is your doctor’s office located?” I asked her. “At the football field.” “You mean Gillette Stadium, where the Patriots play?” I figured she was looking for Brigham and Women’s located right next door.
“How about I take a look at your phone for you? Maybe I can figure out why it’s being so dumb.” Handing it to me, I couldn’t help but notice the face of an old man staring back at me on her home screen. His thin gray hair, combed across his balding head, looked crisp and chiseled. His closed smile gave off a contented, restful look. “That’s a very nice picture,” I said. “Yes, it is,” was all she said. I assume it was her husband, her late husband.
Her phone told me that it had no internet access. “I think I see the problem.” “Can you fix it?” “I’m sure I can.” I fiddled with her maps app, I even powered the whole thing off and then back on again, but 5 minutes later, I was sure all I had done was to accidentally connect it to a satellite somewhere over Australia. “I’m sorry, I don’t seem to know how to fix your phone after all.” “So you can’t make it talk to me?” “No, but I can do my best to talk you through how to get to your doctor’s office.”
In hindsight, I don’t know why I didn’t offer to just go with her, or at least have her follow me there in my car. Actually, I do know. I had other plans in mind for myself. I had come to the gym to work out, and a short 1.2 miles on a stationary bike wasn’t how I wanted to leave things. Plus, she seemed agreeable to my proposal.
“Do you, by chance, know how to get to the highway from here?” “I know how to get to Route 495. Does that help?” “Yes, it does!” I was feeling like I’d soon be able to get back to doing what I’d come to do. “If you can get to 495, drive north on it. Then, take the exit for Route 1 North. Look for Gillette Stadium and you’ll find your doctor’s office.” I looked down at my feet, suddenly aware that, no longer was I not only not on the stationary bike, but the whole time I had been talking with her, I had backed myself half-way across the room from her. And I was still moving. My mind was definitely elsewhere.
Mercifully, the woman was much kinder than me. “You have been so helpful to me. I’d really like to give you some compensation.” Embarrassed, I stepped quickly back in her direction. “No, no. That is not necessary. I didn’t do anything. You came in asking for help with your phone and I couldn’t help you at all.”
She looked away, her eyes got a thoughtful look to them. I walked her to the door and out onto the sidewalk. “I really want to give you something for your help today.” Taking my hand, she peeled open my fingers and proudly dropped something into my palm. I looked down to see two dimes and a nickel. .25 cents. “Thank you,” she said. “When I asked for help next door, no one even tried.”
A couple doors down, a delivery man was dropping off bread. In big red letters on the side of his truck was painted the word, WONDER. I thought about how, for what I had in my hand, the man probably wouldn’t have sold me even a slice. Not one single slice. I wondered if he knew how rich I really was.
PleaseGrace 