My birthday was the last day of September and unless I renewed my driver’s license at the DMV, it was set to expire. I’d put off that chore. I felt a shrinking feeling every time I thought about it. The DMV can be a dismal place. You know what I’m talking about—the lines, the waiting, the drudgery. Soon though, the dread of going began to feel worse and gnaw at me more than the actual going.
So a week before my license expired, I finally drove to the DMV and opened the front door to what I expected: a crowded space with people standing around, waiting and confused. Walking in, I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I asked someone if they were in line and they said no, they’d already been helped.
An Asian couple with a baby overheard me and pointed me to the check-in line. I thanked them. The check-in line moved swiftly and soon, I had the appropriate forms and a small piece of paper with a letter and a long number on it. I searched for empty seats in the cramped waiting room. There were none. I walked back into the lobby and stood, where twenty other people did as well.
On the intercom, a voice droned out a new letter-number every few minutes.
P0000045. H0000021. N0000065.
A young woman walked through the entrance. Her hair was dark and limp, and her clothes looked worn. She stood next to me. It soon became apparent that she didn’t know where to go. I turned towards her to help, just as the Asian couple had guided me. I gestured towards the check-in desk. There was no line now.
“You check in right there.”
She shook her head, looking slightly embarrassed. “No English,” she said. Her accent was heavy.
I tried again to explain, this time with broken high school Spanish. I held up my paper with the letter-number and pointed the way. As I gestured, a large man came from behind where I stood. “Thank you,” he said briskly to me. He must have been listening. “I can help her from here.”
He turned towards the young woman and a beautiful medley of sounds rolled off his tongue as he spoke in native Spanish. He gestured to his wife, who stood up from where she sat. She walked over. She wore expensive clothes and her dark hair was long and smoothed back. She joined her husband, and with no introductions or even smiles, she took the young woman by the arm over to the check-in counter so she could translate for her.
This is just what you do for people, the woman’s ethos seemed to signal. I watched as the employee handed the young woman a clipboard with paperwork to fill out. The woman with expensive clothes then took the young lady’s clipboard, sat down with her on a bench, and filled out the paperwork for her.
Some people left through the lobby doors, so I moved to the waiting room and found an empty seat. The waiting area butted up to a long row of plexiglass windows, each with a slot for a DMV employee. There must have been fifteen windows.
P0000054. H0000023. N0000075. I couldn’t make sense of my place in line.
At the plexiglass window nearest me stood a young mother. Her back was turned as she talked to a DMV worker. A toddler daughter hid behind the mother’s legs. The daughter’s dress was a deep yellow, like that of a farm egg’s yolk, and she wore a hair bow of the same color. The yellow of her dress was a beautiful contrast to her dark skin.
I watched as the little girl peeked around from her mother’s legs and smiled at a woman sitting two feet away. The woman said, “Hello!” This was all the encouragement the little girl needed. She walked from behind her mother and stood, pint-sized, next to the lady in the chair. The mother, deeply engrossed in conversation with the DMV employee, did not have awareness as to what was going on.
The little girl took off her elastic bow and handed it to the lady.
“Ohh! Pretty!” the lady said. She touched the bow and then she carefully put it back on the girl’s head. The little girl looked up at the lady with expectation. The lady reached down and began to affectionately rub the little girl’s back. The child’s smile stretched like a rainbow across her sweet face and something shifted in me in that moment— I felt overwhelmed with love. This, I thought. This gesture of this woman with a stranger’s child, this, like the way the couple earlier helped the woman who didn’t speak English, this is what we are alive to do. Help each other. Love each other. Be love, show love.
The little girl soaked up all the love this woman gave. After a minute or so, she went back to her mother and held onto her legs. Then she came back to the lady to spend a few moments with her. This went on until the lady’s number was called.
“Goodbye!” she sang to the little girl as she left. The child looked confused. Her eyes searched for someone else to connect with and lit upon a young man sitting nearby. He grinned with a gilded mouth and playfully quacked like Donald Duck, which sent the girl into hysterics. She ran and hid behind her mother’s legs. The man laughed and then looked at me and others; he was slightly self-conscious. We smiled and laughed in encouragement. The girl peeked around. He quacked. She released bubbles of tiny-voiced laughter into the room.
P0000058. H0000029. N0000091.
We live most of our lives in our own cultural and socio-economical bubbles of where we are most comfortable. We stick with what’s familiar. Please correct me if you disagree. But when there is division propaganda hurled at us, it’s important to remember: these moments of connection as humans cannot be taken away from us unless we choose.
Helping each other, showing love and concern. This is our power as humanity.
When we allow the force of love that pulsates throughout our being to operate as the most important thing in the world, we save ourselves. Sitting in the waiting room, I looked at the diversity of loving people around me and it was glorious.
P0000063.
My number was finally called. But before I got up, I watched an older gentleman with a cane lumber over to take a seat. He sat down across from another man of the same age. They nodded at each other. “Getting older ain’t for wimps now, is it?” one said to the other. The little girl walked over and looked up at the older man. “Hello,” he said to her. Then the young man next to him quacked, the girl giggled, and we all smiled.
Hope is a thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Katie, I cried through most of this. This is incredible, your best writing so far. I love it with all my heart. And thank you for mentioning "division propaganda." That is coming at us hard right now, and many people will suffer for it.
Beautiful, thank you.