"Oh honey, you're wishing your life away. I just wish it was Friday."
I heard those words from a fellow employee on an elevator in Miami, a middle-aged divorcee raising three teenagers on a single salary. When we'd gotten on the elevator, she'd sighed and said, "Gee, I wish it was Friday." I was young and callow; right away I went one better, blurting that I wished it was next month. Maybe what she said stayed with me because it was the right time for me to hear it: through her words, I suddenly had a glimpse of how precious time could be.
There are words I've remembered all my life, for a number of different reasons. Sometimes the words are pure poetry, hauntingly beautiful. Sometimes they're memorable because they contain an element of truth I'm ready to hear; sometimes they come at an apt moment or are full of good will, or the speaker's character and personality make them compelling. Some words have stayed with me because they echoed my own sentiments so succinctly. Words have such power.
My cat is graceful, a student of mine once wrote in his journal, when he buds his head against me. My cat moves very silkly.
Those words have stayed in my memory for decades. I doubt they would have if he'd used the right verb; 'bud' might have been technically wrong, but it was strangely, poetically perfect: the idea of a cat's head, hard and round like the bud of a flower, the cat moving with the fluidity of flowing silk.
"You folks take care now. And you have a good trip."
I was twenty years old when I heard those words, in a tiny town in Arizona, on a Greyhound bus. My eyes were half closed when the bus stopped to let out two men who'd been buying sacks of seed. I knew this because they'd been chatting with the driver, a man they obviously knew. For a few hours, I'd heard them making smalltalk: a brother-in-law with a cold, the birthday of a shared acquaintance in Albuquerque. They had shoulder-length black hair and the deeply tanned skin of farmers. When they got off the bus, one of the men addressed those words to us remaining two dozen passengers in a soft, low voice. For the rest of the trip, his words followed me all over America and Canada, like a benediction.
"Every time I see him, I don't know what to do. I don't want to patronize him, but I wish there was a way I could show him how very much I respect him."
My friend and fellow graduate student Cleo said those words. We were standing in the corridor of the English Department at San Francisco State University when another student fell down, a young man suffering from a serious nervous disorder. His legs were in braces; he had trouble controlling his arms and legs and he used crutches on a permanent basis, but whenever he fell down, you knew not to offer help: he always managed to stand up again through his own efforts. I remembered Cleo's words because they were heartfelt and touched me almost as much as this man inspired me. Cleo was a non-native speaker of English, but I can't imagine anyone expressing those sentiments more eloquently.
"Well, it wasn't pleasant!"
My friend Carol told me that when I asked her to describe her experience of childbirth. Carol is so upbeat, so gently understated and calm, that I was taken aback. I can turn a hangnail into a broken leg; Carol can make major surgery sound like a bump on the head. No harrowing tales of agonizing 50-hour labors could have scared me more than her Well it wasn't pleasant.
"There may be people who'll stab you in the back, but it will never stop me having friends. It will never stop me trusting. Because when it comes down to it, I just love people."
I heard those words from a fellow PTA volunteer in Abiko, Japan. We shared afternoon patrol duty and she was telling me about an acquaintance who claimed her dog was her best friend, and that she didn't need people. Those words brought tears to my eyes.
"Yes, we knew what he said was rude, but it was just so classic, so New York! He made our trip there totally special!"
Those words came from my friend Liz, in Wales. She and her husband Brian had gone to New York on their honeymoon. On a trip to see the Statue of Liberty, they had mistakenly pushed ahead in line. A man with a Brooklyn accent had expressed his displeasure: "Oi! Assholes! Wait your turn!" They brought that story home like a precious souvenir: "It was like we were in a movie," Liz sighed, "with Robert deNiro!"
Those are just a few of the words I'll never forget. How about you? What are the words you remember?
