She remembers...

Having nothing and wanting something

The wrinkles in her face reminded me of busy road map with many lines running in every direction. I quickly learned underneath all of that was a lovely soul. It was by chance that we met one night when my son was playing his solo shows on Thursdays at Southside Music Hall on Dauphin Street. Those Thursdays had been very successful so the owners decided to expand that show to Sundays as well. Sundays happened to be her day off from her primary bartending job, so she was ready and eager to take this extra day into her schedule. When she told me that, my first thought was, it is always nice to make a little extra money, but I came to understand she also did it to fill her time and keep herself busy.

Until I met her I never knew this place even had a coffee pot. No one had ever made coffee there when I was in attendance for the past couple of years. So I liked her from the start. For this story I will call her Sue.

I have met and continue to meet many memorable people over the years as I attend gigs with my son. My life has been filled up with excitement, adventure, shocking and even amazing things both on the stage and in the audience. It is like two shows going on at the same time and it is often a challenge just to keep up.

Sue was a few years older than me but we basically grew up in the same timeframe. We talked about everything from styles and behaviors to the assassination of President John F Kennedy. I found myself looking forward to seeing Sue on Sunday evenings and hearing more of her stories from all those years working in a college bar that catered mostly to kids from wealthy families. She told me she felt like a babysitter many nights. She loved those kids and it broke her heart that they were pouring their hearts out to her instead of their parents. It seemed that many of them were given mommy’s credit card and dropped off at the bar. The parents had other events to attend or things to address that were important, while the kids were expected to use the cards, have fun and stay out of trouble. That was not the way it went most nights.

Sue could be a gentle, soft spoken lady but if someone misbehaved, she could instantly transform to a potty mouthed tyrant screaming orders to the top of her lungs. This is how she had learned to regain control. She said you have to bow up and be larger and louder so that you get their attention. I listened but I knew she could only bow up so much, I bet she never weighed more than 90 pounds.

I learned that she had pretty much raised herself along with her brother and sister. They had nobody to see or care that there was food, water, clean clothes or any of the basics that we all take for granted. As a little girl, she was without pretty dresses and hair bows, or even a decent meal. There was no warmth in her home in the winter and no cooling in the summer, yet she made it through all of that and was standing here in front of me propped on her elbows as she spoke with tears welled up in her eyes.

I found it ironic that she grew up empty, completely devoid of love and kindness, in the abject poverty she described with absentee parents. Now she was working in a bar, trying to reason with kids who had everything the material world offered and all of the comforts of a king, yet many of them were in a different kind of abject poverty of a sort with absentee parents and devoid of real love.

Everyone has a story to tell. Sue was unique amongst the crowd of ordinary people with ordinary lives. I could feel her pain and she knew that, as she reached out her wrinkled hand and patted the back of my hands while I listened to her that night over coffee. It was her painful truth, yet she was  making an effort to comfort me as I heard her words.

This lady had the heart of a princess and the spirit of a tiger, I felt honored to have spent those evenings in her company.

Inside her was still that little girl who had nothing and wanted something.