Angels at the window
Rhonda
I’ve been having a bad week - what a waste of time and energy being angry is. My quarrel for the past month has been with my bank - and a foreign draft that I ordered in February which was never received and finally today - exactly 28 days later I collected it from the branch. What a palaver! I felt so bad that I took the staff some sweet boxes full of candy and THEY felt so bad that they gave ME a bouquet of flowers and chocolates! But all in all I feel as though I have lost a month of my life to my anger and I have no one to blame but myself.
On the bus today I was thinking about how easy it is to be kind. How much even the smallest gesture can mean to someone.
Just a word.
Just a compliment.
Just letting someone know that you noticed that they needed help.
Like giving someone your seat on the bus.
I want to tell two stories - this one happened to me when I was about 24.
I am not a great beauty. I was fortunate enough in those years to be hanging about on 7th Avenue helping some designer friends with their collections and their shows. I was just a runner but was doing it all for the love and not for the money so these lovely people - Frank Tignino (who is still designing couture dresses in New York), Maurice Antaya - a magician if there ever was one, Richard Arerra, Frank Massandrea - They were all the wild child talents on 7th Avenue in 1974….. - they were incredibly sophisticated in my eyes and they were generous with their time and talents and knowlege. Sometimes there are people who just know how to pry open your mind’s eyelids and show you how to LOOK at something and these four certainly did that for me.
We often ate lunch at small delis that peppered the cross streets and one day we happened to be dining with an incredible model named Carla - oh my god… she was tall and glamourous and Latin and full of opinions … I imagine that most men were just terrified of her, I was in awe! But there we sat Frank, Carla and I eating some tuna sandwiches and talking about the next show at the Met or the Opera or Italy or fabulous food ..and she looked across the table at me and completely out of the blue told me I had beautiful shoulders.
Shoulders
I had never thought about them -
and suddenly I was aware of them -
and strangely proud of them -
and conscious that maybe although I was no beauty there was something about me that actually was attractive.
Now I am old and no one has looked at my shoulders for years maybe decades but I still remember how kind and unexpected that compliment was and how it made me feel for a long time after and how I became aware that sometimes if you say just one small nice thing to someone it can make all the difference.
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The next story is about my friend Rhonda Harness in San Francisco - she also is an extremely talented designer and has the bluest and biggest eyes I have ever known on a human…… She had a difficult life when she was young and taught herself everything - how to sew, how to design beautiful clothes, how to spot antiques - and she became very successful designing fabulously successful collections for other people - She counts Azadine Alaia amoung her fans - and she was so sexy - in a way that made men and boys swoon.
We were shopping or rather Rhonda was shopping and I was tagging along- As we walked down the street we passed an old woman who seemed quite homeless and destitute - she was wearing slippers so worn and was having trouble walking. Rhonda stopped went over and took the womans hand and spoke with her, asking after her family and sharing the woman’s stories. For nearly a hour,they were in deep conversation Rhonda kept holding her hand. When we all took our leave Rhonda bent over and kissed the woman …. and I could see from her eyes just how much that human contact - that touch had meant to her
Sometimes just offering a hand
To be able to see/share someone else’s hardships
To offer some tenderness where there hasn’t been any
I wish I knew how to tell this story the right way. Kindness is one of those things you recognize when you experience it but can’t describe very well…
it is so easy to give a little
every day try to do something nice for someone you don’t know
hold a door open
