Three years ago I had an unusual encounter at my local coffee shop. I had been in such an awful funk in November 2015. So, one weekday, when I normally worked from home, I resolved to get out of the house and went to my local cafe with my laptop. It was pretty packed with people, so I sat down directly across from someone. She was an older woman reading a new hardback, still wrapped in Elliot Bay Books brown paper. I asked her, “New book?”
As simple as that, we began talking. The book she was reading was by Patti Smith and it opened a small doorway between the two of us. We talked about the book and Patti’s music. This woman had gone to hear Patti read downtown the night before. Music meant so much to this woman. She told me her name was Pam.
Pam had worked for the postal service. She retired early she said, “But for what? I got early retirement and worked hard all my life. Now I don’t know what to do with myself.”
She started off working in Spokane, and was a sort of punk herself. She had dominating male associates, whom she rebelled against in the small ways she could while still keeping her job. There was a lot of misogyny in the 80’s at the postal service she told me. She needed this job because she was on her own. She had wanted to be doing something meaningful and creative in the world but felt trapped and couldn’t find a means to go to school, so she just stayed at the post office because it paid well.
I listened to her, but all the while I was emotionally fragile. I was feeling worried about how I’d pay all of my bills this month. I told Pam what I did for work, that I am a musician and poet, a writer of words and songs. I had made a well-thought out plan over three years that was five-fold. My focuses are: recording; public performances; private events; teaching; and the new addition: healing music. When one source of income didn’t come in, another would. Or so I thought.
I had recently quit a secure office job in arts administration to pursue my career as a full-time musician. But, at the time, things weren’t manifesting well as a Certified Clinical Musician. I thought I would have had five clients a month by now, but I only had one. It was making a real monetary dig into my small savings and was disheartening. I was starting to get worried. Scared. I also had a young child, and began to think that I had made a dreadful, self-indulgent choice to pursue my art as my career and she would suffer for it.
People have said sometimes its easier talking to a stranger than a friend, and I suddenly found myself speaking candidly to Pam. She was listening closely, in the same way I had listened to her, sitting across from me, with her long hair and thin face. She looked a bit like Patti Smith herself, a grande dame punk.
Because I had my laptop right there, I shared my website with her and some of my writing and recordings. I don’t know how it happened exactly, but suddenly, I found myself weeping. I tried to reign it in, but I had opened the gate. Pam listened so kindly and told me not to give up. That I was on the path to a uniquely rich life and most people didn’t have the bravery to take that kind of leap. She didn’t. She had wanted to, but was too afraid. To my great shock, she reached out her hand and gave me $50!
I couldn’t believe it. I certainly was not expecting anything to come out of our conversion other than that, a simple exchange of words. Instead, I had made a friend and a patron. She wanted to hear more about my shows and my work and asked to be on my mailing list of events that I send out monthly. That simple act of listening would have been enough, but the encouragement she gave me was lovely and fuels my spirits still today. Three years later at Thanksgiving, I still think of this encounter at the cafe with a wonderful stranger.
My daughter was five when this happened. When I would pack up for a gig, she would wave good-bye at the window and say, “Don’t give up!”
I am still not sure why she said that, but I sure needed to hear it. When I shared this story originally on my event mailer, many people wrote back with their own struggles and stories of endurance.
Now, I am in a new place, a better one I think. My work as a therapeutic bedside harpist did pan out, though there have been downs, I notice the ups too and realize that is part of the process. To my surprise, I’ve also become a mom for a second time. The fact that I can continue on with my five-fold plan with another person to nurture is a miracle in itself. My kids are both healthy and they help me to really prioritize my time – the balance of time I spend on my work; the time I spend with them; and how the two can overlap sometimes.
In Patti Smith’s book Just Kids, she describes leaving her home in New Jersey to make a new life as an artist in New York City. When she got to the bus terminal, she realized she didn’t have enough money for fare. She went to a phone booth to call her mother, and when she closed the door, she saw that someone had left her purse in there. Patti took that as a sign. She took just enough money from that purse to pay the rest of her fare and turned in the purse in to lost and found.
I might have given up on my dream had it not been for meeting Pam that day. I don’t know for sure, but I’m glad I kept going. The road isn’t always smooth, but the journey is real and sometimes there is magic.
