My wife designed the home I’ve lived in alone since I lost her. The moment Muriel saw this apartment, she said, “If we take it, every wall is coming down. Its beauty is hidden behind too many walls!”
The love she brought to our marriage of nearly seventy years now embraces me in this tranquil space she created. Her presence is everywhere, free to glow where walls once stood.
I feel her presence most profoundly in a column she designed to replace a wall that stretched between a bay of windows and the kitchen it kept dark. The column has become far more than structural to me. Every time I pass it, I remember the smile that warmed her face when she visualized its slender grace around which sunlight now streams into the kitchen.
A recent decision by our homeowner’s association threatens the column. To meet that threat I’ve had to call upon qualities within myself I hoped were there.
Our community’s management decided to replace the existing internet provider it considered outdated. The technicians who came to install the new system – a woman and two men – spoke very little English and I know even less Spanish. What little I did understand troubled me. It appeared I was being told wires inside Muriel’s column would now be wrapped around it.
Wire clenching the column would reach for the ceiling and then across to the modem. Surfaces now as smooth as an unblemished cheek would be scarred with stitches. To me, cable coiling around Muriel’s column was a snake intent on strangling her as well. I was an angry breath away from insisting the technicians call for a supervisor or an English-speaking co-worker who would join me in protecting the column.
But Muriel had designed the apartment with love. It was love, not anger I hoped would inspire these young people to rewire the apartment not as a mechanical task, but as an act of kindness.
At 96, I’m four years from being a century old. The love Muriel brought to our marriage helped plant and nourish seeds of wisdom within me. Muriel would expect me to call on that wisdom to win the trust of the technicians. If I won their trust, perhaps their hearts and Muriel’s could touch. She would come alive to people who had never met her and were different from her in so many ways.
I would tell them about Muriel and her dream of creating a home in which four generations would celebrate the love that made them a family. Although she spoke the least English, it was the woman technician to whom I turned, confident she was most likely to share Muriel’s feelings.
I pointed to a nearby photograph of Muriel and then to my eyes. I spread my arms as though embracing the space around us, before touching my eyes again. I wanted the young woman to understand I saw the apartment through Muriel’s eyes.
My gestures seemed to reach her. She moved closer to me but turned to the two men and began speaking rapidly, her voice now confident, even commanding. She kept pointing to the column, often touching it. Within moments the three of them began nodding approvingly.
One of the men unscrewed a metal disk that covered an opening in the column. Wires that had once run through a wall had been threaded into Muriel’s column by the original internet provider. Even I could see the jungle of cable the technician pushed aside.
But instead of considering this a problem, he was showing us space could be found for the new wires. The three turned to me and smiled. Their cables would not snake around the column; they would disappear inside it.
The older of the men took my shoulders, turned me away from the column and said, “Vete, por favor.” I didn’t need to be told the time for words was over.
Two hours later, I was called to rejoin them. They said nothing as I looked for wires running to the modem. There were none to be seen. I turned to the technicians and the four of us embraced.
Despite our differences, within each of us beat a heart that craved kindness. Those differences disappeared as the kindness within us embraced. Wire had been forgotten; what brought us together was a woman they would never meet, but had come to know.
Had we met as our less compassionate selves. I would have admitted them as strangers who would do their jobs without leaving a trace of themselves behind. They would have seen me as one of those old people who resents change and the technology that ignites change. I would have been remembered as someone they joked about.
When I closed the apartment door behind them, their presence remained. I never pass the column without thinking of Muriel. Now there are three others who think of her as well. Bob’s articles have appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and in Next Avenue, the publication of the Public Broadcasting Service. His book, “What’s Stopping Me From Getting Ahead?” was published by McGraw Hill and is in five languages.
