Patty’s Worst Day and Why I Won’t Let You Quit Your Daydream.

Some time ago, I conversed with an 85 year old woman whom I’ll call Patty.

Patty lives at the Assisted Living community I used to work at in Nashville, Tennessee.

She’d been living in the community before I started work there and, even though I no longer work there, still lives there now

I’d pass Patty in the halls and in the dining room and we’d often exchange pleasantries. Patty’d rarely be found without a smile on her face.

Patty was proud. I can’t recall a single day where I saw her without a full face of makeup, fixed hair as if she had somewhere important to go, or an outfit that’d knock ya dead.

One day, I walked past Patty’s room on my way to the employee break room. After my passing, she wrapped her neck around the door frame of her studio apartment and yelled down the hall.

“Excuse me, Mack.. have a second to help me out?” she asked.

She couldn’t find her TV remote. Patty wasn’t much for television and could often be found in the courtyard admiring the flower beds or walking laps around the building smiling at the butterflies. However, it was raining outside that day and Patty was disinterested in the games all the others would play in the community room. Once, she told me it had less to do with the games and more to do with the gossip that went on during the group gatherings. Patty loathed gossip.

I entered Patty’s room, dropped to my hands and knees, and began scanning the floor. Patty, unable to recall the last time she used her remote, assured me it couldn’t have gone far. The room was a direct reflection of Patty’s appearance. Tidy. Well-kept. Meticulous.

Looking through her room, I noticed several pictures of who I assumed to be her family members. She noticed the extra attention I paid to one photograph in particular. A photo of two beautiful Asian women.

“My granddaughters. Mom’s Chinese. They’re as intelligent as they are pretty.” she said.

“That doesn’t even seem fair.” I replied while I chuckled.

Patty continued about her granddaughters.

I took a few moments to learn about how wonderful they were and how Patty wished she could see them more often but they go to school at the University of Alabama and how they can’t get to Nashville very often with their school schedules but how she longed to see them as often as she could and how she understood they’re young girls who have their lives to live and so on. I gave her a few more moments to passively rant. I never minded listening to the residents talk about their grandchildren. I like to hope, if my grandparents were still alive, someone like myself would’ve given them that same time to talk about me. I’d have to think long and hard to come up with something that would’ve made any of my grandparents happier than a listener willing to allow any one of them a few moments to verbally dote on us grandkids.

“She wants to be a nurse,” Patty pointed at the older of the two young ladies in the photo, “I think she’ll make a great nurse. Smart and caring like her mother.”

At once, our conversation meandered through the lives of several other family members of hers.

We talked about all three of her children, about her siblings, all of whom have passed away, and, about her late husband.

After chatting for about 15 minutes, Patty knelt down and slid a thin cardboard box out from underneath her TV set.

“Have I ever told you I used to be a photographer?” she asked.

I considered her question for a moment.

“I don’t think so.” I replied.

She carefully removed some of her award winning photography portraits from the decomposing cardboard box and began telling me about each of them. First, a portrait of herself accompanied with an explanation about how she’d always hated the way her nose had a bit of a bump on the bridge. However, the photo confirmed an assumption I’d long held. Patty’d known physical beauty her whole life. She showed me a few more of her favorites. Award ribbons adorned all of them.

Upon admiring her photography and the stories she told along with them, I asked her if she’d be interested in sitting down to have a long conversation about her life. I needed to know more about her.

“Are you free this Saturday morning? Around 9am?” I asked.

“We’re having cinnamon rolls for breakfast that day but I suppose I can adjust my schedule.” she replied with a side-eyed smirk.

We agreed: Saturday at 9am.

I exited the room.

Patty and I talked for close to two hours that Saturday morning. She told me about her childhood in St. Louis. She told me about her family and her siblings and a story about how everyone in the neighborhood would make her climb the apple tree because she was the only child small enough to climb to the top. She told me about the games she and her siblings played in the backyard of their childhood home. She told me the kinds of questions her father used to ask at the dinner table and she told me about her first crush in high school.

Although I’d always enjoyed the conversations I had with Patty, I’d always felt she lacked the ability to have a conversation with the kind of depth I crave. It was as if she possessed a depth that I knew was there but she’d never allow it to show. Often, the responses she’d give me were brief and terse.

This remained true until photography worked its way into the conversation again. The way a long-distance runner paces themself for the part of the race that really matters, it felt as if Patty was saving all of her conversational energy for this very topic.

“If you can believe it, I never went to school for photography. I went to school to become a ‘typist’ after graduating from high school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and all the other girls were doing it, so I said ‘why not?’” she said.

“I knew I’d be terrible at office work but everyone kept telling me that’s where the money was and, honestly, I really didn’t wanna work, so I never put much thought into what I was going to study. I was hired after I finished school at a church in downtown St. Louis in the administrative department and I was fired on my first day.” she laughed.

This is where the conversation started to get good.

“It really is funny how it all worked out though. What I thought was the worst day of my life ended up becoming the best day of my life. I walked out of the typing room and on my way out the door, I passed the ‘Photography Department’. I walked over to the Photography Director and asked if I could work for him. I’d never touched a camera up until that day but, for some reason I still don’t know, he said ‘yes’.” she continued, “Almost instantly, my life changed forever.”

Patty could barely catch her breath as she told me everything she got to do while working in that photography department. She’d tell me pieces of her favorite projects and how photography was the most pure form of expression the world’s ever known.

Eventually, she was recruited by a gentleman at Kodak who asked her to relocate to New York to work for him. Without hesitation, she moved and spent the majority of her twenties and early thirties working as a photographer in New York City and its surrounding areas. The awards and praise she received were seemingly endless.

“You seemed to really love photography.” I said to her.

“I did, Mack. You have no idea. I loved it so much that I never cared if I made a single dime from it.” she said.

“So, why’d you stop?” I asked.

“Back then, it was the expectation that women found a nice man, married him, and had children with him. I was into my thirties without any of these things and my parents started to insist that I move home and find a man to marry. They were embarrassed of the life I was living. My gut told me not to listen to them but I did.” she said.

Patty moved home from New York and began seeing a gentleman whom her family had known her entire life. They’d gone to the same church since they were young.

Not long after returning to St. Louis, Patty got married to the man and pregnant with her first child. Because her husband made enough to support the family, Patty no longer had to work. She slipped into the grips of stay-at-home motherhood and departed from her life as photographer. Shortly after her first child was born, she followed up with two more.

“So, you gave up photography completely?” I asked.

“In short, yes. I knew I’d never be able to pursue it the way I did before I got married. My husband thought it silly for me to spend time and effort doing it since he made more than enough money to support the children and I. He wanted me to focus all of my attention on making sure all of their needs were met. Once I got married and started having children, my life as a photographer became a memory long gone. I still thought about photography every day but never made the effort to get back to it. I sort of just learned to suppress my love for it as time went on. I’ve regretted the decision to return to St. Louis since the day I made it. That was over 50 years ago. ” she said.

I told her how sorry I was to hear it but reminded her how much her kids must appreciate her.

“Earlier when we were talking, you told me how the day you discovered photography was the best day of your life. If you can recall, and, if you don’t mind me asking, what would you say was the worst day of your life?” I asked.

Silence ensued. I took a gulp of my now room-temperature bitter, black Panera coffee as I waited for a response.

I waited. I watched as Patty carefully considered the magnitude of what she was about to tell me. She waited more. She opened her mouth and suddenly took a gulp of air as if she wanted to say something but the words wouldn’t move from her chest to her tongue.

She closed her mouth. She tried again.

“If you really wanna know,” she looked from her lap into my eyes, “the worst day of my life was the day I decided to marry my husband.”

Unprepared for a response as such, I panicked. I laughed nervously as I tried to come up with a response to what she just shared with me.

“Umm… hmm…. Uhh…. ya?… umm.. Well, I think that’s… normal?” I replied.

Idiot. Dumbass. Moron.

That isn’t fucking normal, I thought to myself. Nothing about that is normal. This woman is spilling her entire heart out and the best I can come up with is ‘that’s normal’.

God.

After that, I failed to recover. We continued to talk for a few more minutes but unavoidable tension filled the air.

If I had to guess, that was the first time she’d ever admitted that to anyone. I can’t imagine she’d just freely gone around telling people in her life how the worst day of her life was the day she married her husband whom she spent 50+ years and raised three children with.

That conversation has crossed my mind more days than it hasn’t since then.

It’s as sobering to me today as it was the day it happened.

It’s a reminder that we’ve got choices in this life.

It’s a reminder that we have a responsibility to follow our dreams regardless of what those around us might think.

It’s a reminder that we might be closer to the light than we think we are.

And, it’s a reminder how quickly that light can go out if we’re not careful to protect it.