—THERE COMES A TIDE

 

 

Dear John,

 

         I thought of you this morning (no surprise there) when several of the wait staff stumbled loudly over a grate for the eighth time. I immediately thought: “Spilled milk.”

         I was with you, having lunch in the café, when you coined that axiom. The café employees continually (though quite efficiently) wiped up the spilled milk that landed on the counter time and time again, but none stopped to consider how to prevent the milk from spilling in the first place.

         I miss you, John.

         I was stupid (again) and read a wonderful but terribly sad book called “The Year of Magical Thinking” all about the death of Joan Didion’s husband and her (mostly futile) attempts at coming to terms with grief and loss. It really made me miss you. And it’s not like I don’t miss you horribly already, every day, after all these years.

         I know I’m romanticizing you, and that I had Hero-worship with you when you were still alive, but you were most definitely my hero. Not just mine, but anyone who was fortunate enough to know you. You were extraordinary in such simple and beautiful ways, a kind, gentle giant with no agenda other than seeing the best in people.

         Like the time you visited my store. Instead of walking the main aisles, you headed straight to the bowels of the store, to the tailor shop and alterations, meeting and heralding the “unsung heroes.” On the receiving dock, a shyster of an employee took advantage of your kind, aw shucks nature, claiming he needed $20 to get his car out of impoundment, which you promptly handed over. When I said, “He’s scamming you,” you looked at me straight and replied, “It’s $20, Len. Twenty dollars, is all.”

         Later or earlier you said, “Len, it’s okay to say just ‘Thank you’ when someone gives you compliment.”

         Later or earlier you asked, “Are you going to be the Union Stewart for our people or not?”

         Later or earlier you said, “Get to know all of your employees really well, all of them, but especially your black employees.”

         Later or earlier you said, “As a leader, your job is really to be a coat that gets thrown over a mud puddle so that everyone else can walk over it without getting dirty or slowing down.”

         Before the Pentagon City store was fully built, we toured it, then outside in the blinding sun, just you and I, you asked me, “Doesn’t it feel like this is what you were born to do?” and I said, “Yeah,” because at the time it was true, though now it’s not. But that moment was another lesson; to believe in one’s destiny.

         Reading “Magical Thinking” (which should come with a warning label for softies like me), I thought about Genny a great deal, how catastrophic the months and years must have been for her following your death on that rowing machine. At the memorial, in the receiving line, she looked spry, alert and hopeful, anything but stricken, that is up until it was my turn. Then she crumpled and sobbed and almost collapsed, hugging me, holding tight saying into the side of my wet neck, “Len, he loved you like a brother. Honest to God, like a brother.”

         Even writing this now is making me weepy. Genny saying that is one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever been given. I hope I told her “Thank you,” instead of telling her why I didn’t deserve the recognition.

         Reading that book made me sad, but not. I got to know you and learn from you and you made me a better person, a better man and teacher and I’m so lucky in that regard.

         Maybe, where you are, you can see my silly tears. Maybe the sight of me bawling like a kid at the table has made you sigh or smile. I hope so. I hope you can see my love for you, here and always, on full display.

 

         Len