What comes first, the happiness or the haircut?

Lately, my non-blog writing has focused on my current and particular sense of place. My place for the past 24 years has been wine country. Well, the other wine country actually. Sonoma County: less than 50 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge and home to vineyards, beaches, the Russian River, dairies, old hippies, farmers, horses, historic houses, young urban refugees, geodesic domes and some of the most beautiful views on the planet. Some days it seems that around every corner is a postcard view of an impressionist’s vineyard or a Currier and Ives farm scene.

But really, it’s the people who make a place. Recently I’ve been collecting impressions of the characters who populate our local scene. It’s helped me realize how at-home I feel here. I recognize people everywhere I go in this not-so-big town. Some of them I really know as great friends, some are longtime acquaintances and others are just people who regularly share the same haunts. This, I am happy to say, is the kind of place where people nod and smile as they pass just because we recognize each other, even though we’ve never met. I can’t think of how long it took to feel this way, this connected to this place, but I know it took a long while. For years I went to work, came home, found something interesting to do on the weekends, but never really felt at home anywhere. Then there were the sleep-deprived years of raising a child when some days I was lucky to remember where I was headed, let alone what I meant to do when I got there or whom I had passed along the way. Maybe it’s just age or familiarity that makes me look around now and appreciate everything and everyone around me so much more, or maybe it’s just a change in perspective. I hope it’s not a sign of early onset dementia or some crazy middle-aged potentially purple hat-wearing syndrome, but lately, I am more and more willing to greet the day with childish enthusiasm. Along with that shift has come this new appreciation and even compassion for “my people.”

Last week it was the guy at the grocery store. He’s a bagger and though I sometimes see him several times a week, I’m embarrassed to say, I can’t remember his name. I’ve always kind of wondered what his story might be. He seems a little too old to be a bagger, but maybe he’s not old at all and is just aged by a hard life or hard living. He’s friendly enough, he’ll always chat some, but then always be a little furtive, looking down or away before you can look back directly or meet his eyes. He doesn’t smile much, and when he does you can tell his teeth aren’t so good. He looks nice, but there’s a definite hard edge to him and a couple of tattoos showing a bit below his shirtsleeve. One day early last week I was in his line and I noticed he was smiling way more than usual. Then while he was bagging my stuff, three separate people who worked at the store commented on his haircut. They were right, it was a great haircut. He looked different--younger, happier. I had bought the huge, heavy bags of salt for the water softener, so he helped me to the car. He made conversation easily and the air around him just felt lighter. I drove off thinking, wow, that really is a great haircut. Then two days later I was back at the store for something and he was outside taking a break. I’d seen him take a smoke break around the side of the store before, but this time he wasn’t smoking, he was out front on the bench and he was talking to a nice looking young woman. They were flirting, and he looked confident and very sweet as he talked a bit and listened and returned her gaze with a soft smile. I dilly-dallied getting my cart so I could watch them a few seconds longer. Then I wondered what had come first, the haircut or the girl, the confidence or the happiness. I really don’t even know him, but I felt as proud and happy for him as I might after seeing one of my son’s life-long friends reach a milestone of some kind, and I was grateful for the extra joy this relative stranger brought to the day. MK