Tomatoes and Talkers

It is a glorious day here in Denver - did you know that because of the thinner air up here a mile high, the sky actually is bluer? I believe it. Today and all Fridays, the agency I work for isn't open, but since I need at least 1700 hours of service work between this past Monday and the end of the next June, I can't go along with the four-day work week. But such a scenario has its advantages, the best of which so far seems to be that I have great flexibility in planning my Friday schedule. Hence, today I have decided to take a self-guided-tour on my bike around the 3 neighborhoods that Cross Community Coalition serves, meeting people, visiting schools, gardens, rec centers, and my current location, the Valdez-Perry branch of the Denver public library. (To hedge any suspicions of over-extended definitions of 'service,' let me say that I'm not counting my blog-writing time towards my service hours =))

One of my favorite things about riding my bike around the city is that everything seems so up close. There's no pane of glass between me and the houses, the people, the rose bushes that flourish everywhere. And so I am continually caught off-guard by beauty, and rejoice in what I might have missed had my nose been immersed in a book as it usually is when I ride the bus.

Instead, today at the corner of High and 23rd, I noticed a bushy garden being tended by an elderly woman in a large plaid shirt and house slippers. The fence around her yard was engulfed in brillant blue morning glories, and the brick of her house's facade was barely visible for all the orange trumpet flowers and blooming plants in terra cotta. "What a lovely garden!" I called out. "Would you like a tomato?" she replied, apparently her habitual response to passerby's compliments. I couldn't deny it; I did want a tomato, and so after the usual back-and-forth of polite denial and insistence, I held a scarlet tomato with green tints and a gnarly appearance. "It's an heirloom," she noted, which perhaps explains the uncharacteristic knobby-ness of the fruit. As she turned back to her garden to continue whatever she was doing when my compliment interrupted her, she added, "It's juicy. Don't eat it all at once." Thus prompted my first minor disobedience of the day - I did eat it all at once, and it was good. And so juicy that I have dried tomato dribble all down my forearm, and in the crevices of my fingers.

A few more thoughts: First, it seems to me that people are very talktative here in Denver. There have been many instances in the past week, both at work and around the neighborhood, when a conversation has passed (in my estimation) the standard length allotted for acquaintances or co-workers, and I notice my toes tapping, my arms crossing and un-crossing, and my responses becoming quicker and more absent-minded. For example, I've made friends with an elderly gentleman, Manual Antonio, whom I met on the bus my second day at work and met again at mass this morning. He walked with me to the first stop on my self-tour, talking all the time about various incidents in his childhood, the vast array of cars he's owned and what subsequently happened to them, the jobs he has held despite of his lack of education, and the options of bus routes I could potentially take to work. This was all very pleasant while we were strolling, but after we paused for a while in front of the elementary school, inside of which I wished to go, my impatience began to leak out in the afore-mentioned warning signs. What can I blame for my reticence to stand and listen? Is it an East-coast mentality of 'time is money' that doesn't seem to have caught root as deeply here? Or a personal motor that churns to get things done, and now more things, and now still more? I had to remind myself - talking with Manual legitmately counts as service! For what else am I here for, but to love the people that I meet and get to know? And perhaps he has no one to listen to him talk about cars and children and bus routes. If that's what I can do, then God help me keep my toes in line and my face un-distracted! (I ancticipate getting lots of practice here in the particular virtue of patience.)

One more thought - What I'm doing here, is this preparation for an activity yet to be realized, or the actual work itself? In other words, am I improving my Spanish through interaction in order to communicate with more people in the future, or is the interaction enough in itself, an end? I ask because I have been considering this year a 'transition' year, between college and whatever lies ahead. And while I do hope that much discernment takes place between now and next autumn, I'm realizing that I have a preferred image of life as a set of building blocks, one added to another in straight order, the experiences and knowledge gained linear in style and quick to notice. I don't think that that's a very accurate image after all - I don't know what to replace it with, but something more jumbled and tangled and...alive. In other words, what I learn this year might not in fact translate as neatly as another line on my resume that is in turn transformed into a job. And that won't lessen the value of this year one iota, not when there is so much present beauty here, and joy, and learning how to love.

Well, back to the bike tour! Until next post!