Somewhere Over the Rainbow

`live in the grocery store

With each thought of these moments, my heart sings.

He is not one to connect with customers the way most do.

Whether at the cash register or restocking aisles, he stays very much to himself.

Eye contact and smiles are limited.

Speech is very soft.

My intuition is that social connection is a challenge.

One day during the holiday season as he was ringing up my groceries, I heard him quietly singing along with the holiday music that was playing.

I looked at him and said, “I hear you singing along with the music.”

With those words, there was eye contact and a crooked smile, and he said, “Yes” and sang just a bit more loudly.

I joined him. I do not remember exactly what song it was but we sang a couple of lines together.

Since then, when I see him stocking the aisles or as he waits on me at the register, I remind him he is a singer.

I asked him one day if he sang all the time as a child. He said he didn’t know and that he would have to ask his mother.

A few weeks after the holiday season, when in line at his register, I asked, “So what is the song today?”

He said, “Now it is show tunes” and began to sing one. I don’t recall which one, but not one I have in my memory the way he does.

He has a whole catalogue of show tunes inside him (between holiday music and show tunes I have a feeling I have only scratched the surface).

When I told him the first song was not familiar, he said, “Oh, how about this one?”

He began to sing, “Oh what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day – I’ve got a wonderful feeling everything’s going my way.”

Let me tell you, as I joined in with him, it took me right back to my childhood bedroom, when on school mornings my father stood in the doorway and belted out that exact song.

I was simultaneously singing with my new grocery story friend and re-living my childhood.

It was a beautiful moment.

I told him about my father, the memory in that moment, and thanked him.

He couldn’t have known when he chose that song where it would take me.

Some days I now at least hum about the beautiful morning as I get breakfast and think about the singing grocery clerk and my dad.

The other day he was restocking an aisle.

“What are we singing today?”

I always wait to hear what he chooses.

He began to sing some words from “Oklahoma” but not one of the songs I know so I just listened and thanked him.

A few minutes later we bumped into each other again as he was taking the empty cart back to the storage area and I was heading to dairy.

I stopped, he stopped, and soon we were singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Just a few lines.

It was humorous because I was singing the very beginning lines and he was singing lines a bit into the song.

We were also singing on different notes.

Quietly, not drawing an audience, though I wonder what it would be like to get everyone around us singing.

He does not sing in tune and with my hearing loss, singing is no longer the talent it once was.

At the end of a few lines, we were both laughing.

After wishing him a good rest of the day, and receiving another smile, I continued and finished my shopping.

These are little life-giving moments to me because I don’t just see his face light up but know mine is lighting up too.

He socializes in a way I don’t observe with others, and I now socialize in a new way in the grocery store.

Not only do I leave the store with my bags of food, but inside each one is an invisible can or bundle or bunch of organic, fresh, sustaining joy.

Joy stored in my heart with no expiration date.

I wonder who you might encounter or have already where just a few notes or a few words uplift in ways that weave not only through that day but return a day after and a day after, sustaining even in the tiniest of ways.

And - maybe not so tiny after all.