Grand Gestures

Sometime close to this time last year, Mom and I stood in the kitchen and talked about some holiday party we were putting on.  I had, because it is in my nature to be outlandishly inclusive, invited people who really had no reason or means to come nor a mode of transportation.  Still she looked at me in the way that all mothers look pointedly at their daughters and said 'What are you going to do if he shows up?'

'He won't,' I responded, 'it's too far.'

'He might.  You don't know.'

'I do know.. and I'm too old to be waiting for the grand gesture.'  And that was pretty much where the conversation ended.  I'm too old to be waiting for the grand gesture; the sweeping moment; the heart-in-your-throat instant of emotional enormity.

That has not changed in my mind- not really.  What has changed, for me, is the notion of grand and the notion of gesture.  This most recent round of travels hit that change home hard.  The grand gesture…. the grand gesture- by dictionary definition it is necessarily a rather big thing.  It's the unexpectedly huge thing that changes the rules of the game.

But the gesture, and it's grandeur, as I have finally allowed to filter through my knuckle-headed skull, need not be big.  It's not the size that matters, it's the sweep of it- to you.  Because the small things have a power unto themselves: the remembered phrase; the inside joke; the smile that, even though you've been with a person for 30-plus years, is still only yours.  Small, but grand enough to melt my heart.

These past few weeks I have people-watched and -witnessed a lot.  In a lot of different countries (see my previous post).  I watched a young Latvian couple at a spa go out of their way to NOT talk to each other (forking smartphones) over dinner while not two tables away my partner in crime listened to me (consider that!) prattle on about everything and nothing important.  I watched mothers hold the hands of their children as they toddled up to meet Santa Claus on his most holy Christmas chair.  I watched as a busking saxophone player cracked the biggest smile I've seen, and nod to me with his heart in his eyes, when I applauded him in the middle of a crowded square.  I was the only one clapping.  It was not a grand gesture- but it was a grand gesture to him.

I listened to a young Sami man sing to his reindeer, utterly unaware of his effect on the rest of us.  I followed an older Norwegian woman to a concert which meant more to her than I could know (both the concert and her ability to explain it to me, translate it for me).  I watched a man buy a candle shaped like a Christmas tree.

I watched a couple, sitting across the aisle from me on some flight (again, see the previous post), treat each other as they were absolutely the sun and the moon.  Somewhere in their mid-to-late sixties, I watched this couple gaze at each other.  I watched them talk to each other, watched them engage each other, watched them appear to genuinely adore each other.  I watched him whisper in her ear and her smile and answer in kind.  And even as I dozed off to a light sleep, I watched them hold each other's hands.

Later, deplaning in who-knows-where, I noticed that he took her backpack out of the overhead bin and helped her put the straps over her shoulders.  And instead of seeming seedy and patronizing, it seemed careful and loving.

That one gesture, that one moment, that one instant… I thought, that's it.  It took me all this time, all this distance, all this experience, but there it is...

That's the Grand Gesture.

So maybe I am too old to be waiting for the dictionary's version of the grand gesture, in fact I'm sure that I am.  But maybe I'm not too old to hope for and to be waiting for that.

And until next time, I do hope you aren't either.