The Taxi Ride...

Just so you may know there is a very powerful ending to this story.👍

In the Purple Shoes blog the other day, I ended it at the Sky City Restaurant in the Space Needle in Seattle with my friends Damien and his partner Logan.  All was well with the Maitre-d.  He was just curious after observing Damien and I diving under the table multiple times to retrieve Damien's PURPLE shoe which slipped onto a ledge.  You see the Restaurant revolves and we had to wait until we returned to the exact place again so we could finally retrieve it and did so with finesse. 

After I completed the massive flats for a huge theatre production Damien needed my help with, the time came for me to return home and get back to my horse and my own Theatre Scene Design work ahead of me.  But first I had to get out of Seattle.  Damien ALWAYS ran late for EVERYthing.  I barely even made it to the boarding gate in time!

Outside of Chicago my plane remained in a holding pattern forever due to storms and I missed my connecting flight.  Yet there are certain times when everything happens for a reason though.  Very POWERfully happens.

Eventually I FINALLY arrived back in Maryland shortly after midnight.  I was exhausted.

After finally tracking down my luggage I rushed out of the airport and was relieved to see a few taxi's waiting for their next fare and plunged into one.

When I did I totally startled the poor lady whose taxi I threw myself into.  For a few moments she couldn't seem to speak for some reason.  Finally she did.  Asked my destination.  Told me she would need my help giving directions.  No problem.

Now usually I'm the one who makes conversation in taxi's, always keenly interested in others I get to meet.  However it was this driver, a older woman who began.

"My name is Jenny.  What's your name?"

"Adelaide.  Nice to meet you Jenny!"

"Have you been traveling far, Adelaide?"

"Seattle, I..."

"What do you do?"

"I am a Theatre Scene Designer, and..."

"A Theatre Scene Designer?  That's incredible!  What a wonderful way to make a living!  Have you been doing it long?"

I waited a moment in case Jenny needed to interrupt me again before I plunged in to respond.😂

"Actually I recently completed my second internship.  You see, due to the dwarfism [it had to be obvious to her, right?!!🤣] I kind of got detoured a bit with two spine surgeries twice learning to walk again, then needing a bone marrow treatment at Hopkins but I refused to give up even when everything seemed stacked against me.  I'm a very dedicated "refuses to give up" kind of person.  Eventually I finally grabbed hold of my dream."

There was silence from the front.  And then...

"Adelaide, we're coming up to a McDonald's.  Would you mind terribly if we get coffee at the Drive-thru?  I'll buy it."

"Wow, at this point coffee sounds really good to me.  I

haven't had anything to eat since lunch on my flight yesterday.  Would you mind if I order some chicken nuggets?  I'd love to treat you to some or whatever 

else you'd like."

"No, I'm fine.  Just realized I could use some coffee."

After Jenny bought us both coffee and I the nuggets, she asked if I would mind if we parked until we were done.  I didn't mind.

"Adelaide, I know it must be very hard being a...a..."

"Little Person."

"Little Person.  How do you cope with life in a body like yours?  I've only just met you but I sense you are a very strong person inside.  I desperately need to know how you cope with what life throws at you."

There was indeed a desperate sense of urgency I heard in her voice.

"Jenny, I'll be happy to share with you what works for me.  Before I do it's very important to BELIEVE you've got what it takes within you to be strong inside too.  If you imagine it, you will achieve it, if you dream it, you become it...so..."

"Wait a moment!  I have to write that down!  Uh, do you have any paper?"

I usually always do but didn't, yet McDonald's had given us a bunch of napkins.

"Hold fast to your dreams and don't let go of them."

"But Adelaide, how do..."

"I have always coped by keeping focused on my glass being a full one because it IS a very full one.  If I were to keep focused on all the many things "wrong" in my life I would not want to even try at all because I'd be too overwhelmed with self pity.  Self pity steals happiness.  Not only that who wants to be around a complaining whiner anyway?"

"Well what can a person replace self pity with?"

"A gratitude attitude.  Focus on what you have to be thankful for.  Like being able to just see, hear, walk, talk, and having a roof over your head.  Become aware of nature.  Remember the two words 'and yet.'  For instance when I encounter the mean ridicule I constantly get, I refuse to let their abuse take my power from me.  I know I am being treated awful and yet I have my horse to break free upon by flying with the wind across fields.  How many people can?  The "and yet" allows me to retain my power by not letting strangers have it, if this makes sense."

"It does!  It really does!"

"Finally Jenny, embrace courage.  The greatest test of courage is to bear pain without losing heart.  Embrace optimism.  Hope.  Love.  One of the most wonderful treasures to remember is how the love we live is what remains after we're no longer here.  Strive to live love."

Jenny was beginning to run out of napkins and I had reached a point where even coffee wasn't helping me anymore and I felt I was rambling away.  The poor lady was probably being polite by not telling me just how rambling away I actually was.

I am sure she could see how my tiredness was clearly overtaking me by now.  As Jenny drove me home her thoughts were churning with all I gave her.

It was when we arrived and she stopped the car Jenny told me something which jarred me awake...I mean WIDE AWAKE.  

For you see, the following is what Jenny told me:

"Adelaide, this isn't a taxi.  My husband of forty-two years of marriage who was my soul mate, my everything, died of pancreatic cancer last week, less than a month after we were told he had it.  Our daughter, an only child was just here.  We fought about everything.  Wanted me to make huge life altering decisions immediately aside from the funeral arrangements.  How can anybody even make a decision about what to eat when their heart is broken and they don't know how to survive the most frightening traumatic experience of their life?  

"But I did make a decision.  A decision that was all too easy for me to make and one I intended to carry out as soon as I returned home from dropping my daughter off at the airport.  I tried to hug her.  I even tried to tell her I loved her but she screamed at me to go to hell then leaped out of the car and was gone.

"So I decided to drive home, pull this car into the garage, shut the door, then as the car continued to run just peacefully go freeing myself from all the pain and agony of this...this broken heart. 

"And then YOU from out of nowhere at that moment, that VERY moment jump into my car thinking its a cab!  

"Adelaide, I don't know about you but Someone far more powerful than we are put you here!  Not only put you here tonight but put you here on the journey you're on to touch lives.  Either this or I'm sitting here speaking to a real live angel!  Are you?!!"

"Jenny, if I am an angel, I sure am unaware I am."😂