Je Ne Sais Quoi

“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”

― John Joseph Powell

I was raised by an independent, compassionate, beautiful, wild woman—my mother. She was a single parent for most of my childhood, and as it goes, life was not always easy. She often left for work before I’d wake and return hours after my bedtime. My early youth was at times precarious, often packed with adventure, sometimes lacking in quality time, yet nonetheless brimming with love. I could never get enough time with my mother, she would wear herself thin providing for three children, but every moment spent together was all the more precious.

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I prefer the term act of kindness over good deed. Synonyms of the latter include words like feat, like performance. To me it carries a connotation of “kindness for notoriety’s sake,” as opposed to something that radiates love, something that occurs as naturally as the stars emerge each night. I’ve learned it’s often the smallest acts of kindness that create the deepest waves.

Rather than tell a single story, I’d like to share a series of small yet significant memories that still pay my thoughts a visit every now and then.

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When I was five I began flying from my home state of California to Omaha where my father lived. I traveled as an unaccompanied minor, placing me among the world of adults and necessary commutes. I met many beautiful people in my years among the Southwest Airlines staff; stewardesses who let me pick the best seats, who gave me a variety of snacks not offered to other fliers; and pilots who let me press buttons in the cockpit, some of which signaled the plane to shake, only to feign panic as if I’d pressed a button reserved solely for emergencies. But I knew better. I was once fortunate to meet an older woman who talked with me for hours. She told me all about her grandchildren, her home, and the squirrels that resided just outside it. When she got off for a transferring flight she got up and kissed my forehead, her hands resting on my shoulders a while after she pulled away. I felt she was my grandmother in some way, however brief her stop in my life. When flight attendants returned to their take-off procedures, one young woman with wings pinned to her vest stopped by my row with a McDonalds Happy Meal and a few Kid’s Nature magazines that my airplane companion had purchased for me. My heart jumped slightly and I realized I missed her. I suppose she made me feel worthy of love, even from a stranger.

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One year just before Christmas, when we were especially tight on money, my mom took us to Outback Steakhouse and gave us each $100. At seven I was elated by the large sum. I felt rich. But I think my brothers understood there would be no Christmas tree this year, few if any presents, and especially the extent of our mother’s hardship. She operated on exhaustion with grace and pure optimism. That holiday didn’t appear any different to me than the rest. I woke up to a Christmas tree in our living room, my older brother—eleven at the time and who would eventually become the troublemaker of the family—had used his money to buy a Christmas tree. I’m not sure if anyone helped him assemble it. I only know that I loved Christmas that year as much as I had the years prior.

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At Elsinore Elementary School I spent my recess a little differently than other girls. Of course this sounds like a trope but truly, I was a nutty kid. I hopped around playing with a new group of classmates every week, trying out jump rope and something akin to soccer, enjoying handball and a game of tag or Red Rover. Sometimes I’d go to the sandbox by myself just to pour large quantities of sand in my hair—only to spend the remainder of the school day picking out each grain to help pass the time.

I’d often been told I was bright and mature for my age; perhaps one of the benefits of being a girl. And yet I was simultaneously independent, rambunctious, and as a friend once told me: odd. I had a talent for shifting between the two on a whim depending on my mood and environment, I suppose this hasn’t changed at twenty-three.

Mr. Duarte was the school’s primary security guard; he was also responsible for supervising the playground. Mr. Duarte was my favorite and I often spent my entire recess with him… He managed to put up with a wild child, one who lacked the attention she craved, and he did so with patience, with compassion, with natural kindness. When my dog Nikki would follow me on my walks to school in the mornings and I was unable to shoo her home, he would give her a pet at the school’s outdoor entrance, call her into his pick-up truck or security cart, and return her to our backyard. Sometimes I’d be in class and I’d get wind of a happy Golden Retriever hanging out with the first graders at recess and I’d just know. Eventually I’d learn Mr. Duarte had safely returned her and shut our front gate.

My fondest memories of Mr. Duarte were always at recess. For several years I’d bother him at his post adjacent to the playground, and he’d talk to me as much or as little as I wanted. Far too often I’d climb on his arm and he'd extend it outward with me hanging on like a monkey. I’d always been younger and vastly smaller than my classmates and so I was fairly light, but I was a real firecracker for something my size and he was certainly fifty, perhaps fifty-five, and in hindsight I hope I hadn’t inflicted damage on his back. He’d let me blow the horn signaling the end of recess and I’d shout in the megaphone that it was time to return to class.

It wasn't a decade later my demeanor would change. At some point during the hardships of growing up—of being criticized by a cold grandmother, of the occasional cruelty and indifference of troubled older brothers, a too-often absent mom, and of becoming keenly aware of my idiosyncrasies and my struggle to fit in with kids my age—I felt ashamed of who I was. I became fragile and insecure. I learned to be passive, to talk less, to chameleon my peers. I grew inward and remained there for years. And when I look back at the stark difference in those periods of my life, and with much greater compassion for my younger self, I am so grateful that he allowed me to just be.

Mr. Duarte never seemed annoyed. Never asked me to run along; never insinuated a young girl shouldn’t climb on people when I wasn’t unaware of the looks I’d occasionally get from others. He seemed happy to know me, maybe even happy to be bothered.

To this day he serves as a reminder of the goodness so often present in everyday people, and of the many pain-ridden kids who grow up without the chance of crossing paths with someone like him.

Every day he’d tell me Hi my Little Mosquito.

Adios, Mosquito.

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She is the kind of person who pays for those in a car behind her at a drive-thru. Growing up, my mom was the person who took in stray animals: dogs whom she’d rehabilitate and re-home, orphaned baby squirrels, raccoons, an opossum only a week old, anything with big eyes really.

She spent two weeks in Guatemala on a volunteer trip when I was six or seven. I can’t remember who watched us at the time but I remember going through photos of babies in cages and of small rooms packed with cribs for toddlers. The orphanages did their best to help as many children as possible, but the number of kids in their care was rising faster than they could manage. It was a dangerous place to be at that time, I’m almost certain this hasn’t changed since. But most children would not be adopted and so American volunteers were discouraged, though not prohibited from holding babies and playing with the older children, as two weeks was enough time for them to get attached to a member of the group. She told me how they coiled when they were picked up and embraced; warmth and physical touch was unfamiliar to them. Eventually they would come to cling to her and wouldn't let go. She’d have to uncurl their fingers to release her arms from their clutch and she’d turn away, tears burning her cheeks.

My mom and the rest of her group were instructed not to go into the city as there were tanks on every street and police violence, particularly toward Americans. But my mom carried on as she always does and explored beyond such obstacles. When she found an area safe to take some of the children she brought a group of them to a nearby park to treat them with some ice cream. The orphans hadn’t tasted ice cream before, and watching them lick their cones with eyes beaming in confusion provided a cherry of laughter amidst a sobering display of poverty.

My favorite photo from my mother’s trip was of her and a happy five year old girl. I can no longer remember her name, I only remember that she seemed sweet, and something seemed particularly special about her. She had a brain tumor and was in need of surgery. My mom had considered adopting her only to learn a married couple had just decided to do so.

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My mother was someone who took in stray teenagers. Having two older brothers and living in a low-income neighborhood, my brothers had collected many friends; some of which came from troubled homes. Some had been neglected or abused by family members. Others just didn’t have a place to live, parents indifferent. She gave these kids more chances than I thought she should, as some would eventually take advantage of her. Yet she more than anyone understood what it was like to grow up in an abusive home. Several of them would not improve their lives after leaving, but a few did.

And to her it was worth it.

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One day when I was in the third grade, my mother showed up in the parking lot in her big orange dump truck—a work truck and eye sore, it was rumbling and heaving as loudly as ever. Only an hour after I'd walked to my Elementary School and started my day she decided to ditch work and take me to SeaWorld. I hadn’t seen her much in the previous weeks and so it was an unexpected surprise, but I could only laugh at her choice in transportation. We had a lovely day getting soaked during the Killer Whale performances and petting the deep blue's silkiest creature, the Manta Ray.

On our way home from SeaWorld, on a busy Californian highway, we saw a truck pulled over on the side of the road and what looked like a man and a woman arguing on a grassy median. We saw two sets of quick and gesticulating hands moving toward one another. Something seemed off. I was worried about the pair and I knew my mom would be too, and without hesitation she made a U-Turn and pulled off the road just beside them. She stepped out of the vehicle and asked if everything was okay, if the woman needed a ride. The blonde-haired gal saw my mom, noticed me in the passenger window and seemed to trust her intuition and accept my mom’s help. She took a seat between the two of us and we drove her home. My mother asked if she was all right and if the man had hit her. The woman said she was okay; though she said it wasn’t the first time her boyfriend had abrupted in anger seemingly from air.

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I suppose I write about my mother most because she’s responsible for my perception of the world—my relationship to humanity. She is the most compassionate, idiosyncratic helper I’ve ever met, and her well of empathy has poured into my own. And while she passed these traits onto me early in life, I did not always act on them. In my teenage years I was often embarrassed by her willingness to help people in ways that went against the status quo; her loudness at times floated above all else and her tendency to overshare made me cringe. I suppose at times I felt inconvenienced by the way she'd designed her life.

I sort of knew it was a rule among drivers to express sympathy quietly when passing a stranded person and then to carry on. This was rarely something we subscribed to.

And for most people, it isn’t second nature to slam their brakes on an interstate, run toward the driver of a car who’d decided he no longer wanted to live—who they had witnessed swerve, crash into a cement pillar, and catch fire—and use their t-shirt to smother the flames. Yet this is exactly what she did. Of course my mother is no saint. She was unable to help rescue this person without exclaiming somewhat harshly, What the fuck were you thinking?

And it isn’t typically encouraged to let a homeless person live in a trailer in your backyard. When I tell people that Boz used to give me and my brothers Bazooka bubble gum from a plastic tub inside his mobile home, it always sounds a little strange. And I can’t remember what he looked like, I don’t know his story, I only remember him having a kind aura and that he seemed happy just to have a place to call home.

Secretly, even amidst the selfish and self-conscious phases of my youth, I was proud to have a rule breaker for a mom.

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About a year ago I was introduced to a group of twenty-somethings who were the kind of people I’d always wanted to meet. After a late night at a couple bars, karaoke, talk of poetry and of the only decent way to experience cauliflower wings and their various sauces, it was time to part ways. While it wasn’t the first time I’d been taken under someone’s wing and brought into a social circle among people I’d come to love, it was the first time I’d truly felt present the entire night. While saying goodbye my coworker expressed that these were her people—and that their little unit practiced vulnerability. And I remember thinking this statement alone was such a brave thing to say; that this is what I’d been seeking for years.

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We are all flawed and perceptibly so. But in growing up I've learned there's no use in caring about the shapes of these flaws. I’ve realized empathy is nothing but a word if we choose not to let it guide us.

Today I don’t always offer spare cash to the houseless person at an intersection, but because of my mother, I always smile in their direction. I try to make them feel seen; no matter how glum I feel knowing I will sleep on a bed tonight as they will likely sleep under a bridge. When a customer comes into the Italian deli where I work I practice being open. No matter how tired I am, how dreadful a customer seems, I practice being kind. And about twice a week I find someone willing to tell me an unlikely story from their day or about a recent difficulty in their life. All because I asked, though sometimes it takes a light prod.

Truthfully, kindness is easy. Vulnerability however; that’s the stuff that makes people uneasy—yet it’s the same stuff that adds a certain zest, a certain je ne sais quoi, to one’s life.

And it's certainly worth a try.