An American in Paris
I supposed that later in life I would become a therapist and help people, enlisting the science of multiple modalities of healing. I liked the idea of private, clandestine cases, keeping confidences, and soft words spoken on soft sofas within serene spaces awash in soft lighting.
I couldn’t continue in grad school because of finances, however (or the lack thereof). So I listened and waited. I imagined my little room of healing could be anywhere I met a grieving soul, who just needed a kind word, an embrace or a smile at a particular moment.
I thought of that in the airport in Paris, where because of my sister’s broken foot, we were ushered into a private room awaiting the little car that would drive us to the departure gate. I sat next to a woman who was asked something in French by the airline agent. Their exchange, although not in English, spoke a universal language.
She clearly was carrying a little box filled with broken glass tucked away in a hidden place inside her heart, safely out of reach of security and praying suspicious eyes. But I saw it. I knew it was there.
I reached over and hugged her, asking the agent to translate for me. “Could I help you in some way?”
In broken English, she stammered, “I know what you just asked.”
She tilted her head, not unlike a child feeling coy in the discomfort of their pain, like not knowing where you were supposed to put it. Like intimating, “What do I do with this?” Do you know, American Lady?”
We hugged for a long time, her tears staining my jacket as she wept.
That’s the kind of office that God gives me these days. The mobile kind. The one that doesn’t require a shingle on the door or a framed diploma on the wall. The smelly and smudgy-not-sanctified office of the shepherd, who searches for the lost lamb in the unlikeliest of places. In your beauty salon. In the coffee shop. On a park bench. On a hard seat in the Paris airport sitting next to a stranger who doesn’t speak your verbal language but shares a universal language of the heart.
