Another week, another entry for the Personal Corner of this humble website.
It’s Sunday.
I don’t have a washing machine in my current apartment yet, so I either do laundry by hand or send it over to a service run by a wonderful lady who is always very attentive. I’ve been thinking about what to call this relationship. Should I say I’m a customer or a client?
According to the professional distinction, I should say I’m a customer. That’s because a customer has a transactional relationship with a business, while a client engages in a more professional, relational arrangement built on trust and advice. My relationship with the laundry service is clearly transactional, but today, it felt a little more like the latter.
This lady who regularly delivers my clean laundry asked today:
“Ma’am… are you alone? Lonely?”
By the way, in the Philippines, you should get used to being called “Ma’am” or “Sir”, in general. It’s a sign of respect for Filipinos. In general.
Me: “What? Huh? Why?” (Caught completely off guard)
Her:
“Are you not lonely? Alone in life? How about feeling scared?”
Well. Whatta question. I looked at her. Then at my laundry bag. Then back at her again.
What do you even say to that?
That yes, I sleep diagonally on my bed because I can?
That I’ve learned to assemble furniture, fix the shower and also regulate emotional rollercoasters like it’s my usual tennis session?
That the silence in my apartment is often golden… and sometimes deafening?
So I smiled.
“Lonely? Sometimes,” I said. “But not today.”
“Scared of many things. Not of being alone per se. Aloneness is like a room. Some days it echoes while some days it is so light, it sings.”
She nodded like I had just taught her a new setting on the washing machine (not that I know how to set the washing machine, okay? That is one thing I have yet to Google). She then replied: “I ask because my cousin says people who live alone get sad.”
“People who live with the wrong people get sad too,” I said, smiling. “The trick is good company. Even if it is your own.”
We stood at the hallway, there in that clean little pause where strangers become slightly less strange. And then she waved goodbye and said: “See you”
What a random interaction. But for better or worse, that interaction just made me feel like I am a grandma. I probably should get a cat (or cats). And dogs. Of course.
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