Goodbye Kenneth

Being from a small town, I relish the level of anonymity that living and working in a larger city can offer. There’s no forced obligation to get to know your neighbors—you can smile and wave over the fence without becoming enmeshed in one another’s lives. Choice, rather than circumstance, can become what binds you to people.

That said, in my very habitual way, I have peopled my life with a cast of strangers whose own consistency has fit them into my daily routine. There’s my morning bus driver, a stoic Sikh man who is predictably off-schedule. He may be extremely early. He may be twenty minutes late. While admittedly inconvenient, I find something so poetic about a bus driver who is incapable of following a timetable, that I have grown quite fond of him from a distance.

In the neighborhood where I work, I am slightly unsettled if one of our rotation of street musicians is missing, or if the kind cashier at the corner deli is not at her morning post. She asks me about my pregnancy in a lilting, Caribbean-sounding accent, and frequently reminds me that my health and the baby’s is a result of a solid fact: “God is good.”

In between the bus and the deli, my commute has given me the frequent, passing privilege of a casual morning blessing from Kenneth.

The Washington Post, like a handful of other large papers, issues a free tabloid version of the news each morning. This diet Post is distributed through corner boxes and by a modern-day crop of middle-aged and elderly newsies at Metro stations across the city. While most of these paper men and women range from half-hearted proselytizers to something akin to carnival barkers, Kenneth rules his station with charm and a healthy range of warm greetings: “There she is!” “Good morning, beautiful people!” and when you take one of his free papers, “I do love you for that!”

Commuters are, generally speaking, not happy people. They stomp down the sidewalk toward the station with their brief cases, iPods, and skirt suits matched with commuters’ sneakers (the pumps are in the bag). Marching off to work, there’s little smiling, no eye contact, and then as each nears the station and gets within Kenneth’s range, something magical happens. Their humanity returns.

I’ve heard that people bring Kenneth baked goods. His frustrated competitor from the city’s other paper watches with angry eyes as people step around him for a word with Kenneth. My boss has said that it’s as though Kenneth is a minister and we are his congregation. He’s more like Willy Wonka or Santa Claus.

As I’ve grown increasingly gravid with child, Kenneth has started spotting me farther and farther back along my trek to the station gates. “There she is! Number One Mother!”

I rarely take the paper, because I usually have a library book in my bag, but Kenneth doesn’t discriminate. I tell him to have a great day, and I know he will. The man seems to have an internal font of happiness that just radiates out to the rest of us. As I waddle into the station, Kenneth usually shouts after me, “And don’t you do a damn thing today. You deserve it!” Tired, swollen, hugely pregnant, I promise him I’ll try to take it easy, and turn into the gate.

Yesterday, I realized that my bus driver has been replaced. I thought he might be off sick this week with a cold, or that he was just running so late or early that I was catching the bus that comes before or after him. But he’s gone (likely the result of complaints from less imaginative bus riders). The new driver comes right according to the schedule. It’s admittedly easier to plan around, but lacks a certain sort of enchantment.

Mourning the loss of my erratic driver, I realized how much I’ve come to depend upon these strangers whose lives overlap daily with mine. If habit is comforting, then there’s a deeper solace in the stories we tell ourselves about the minor characters who dependably fill our lives.

As I reflected upon this and made my way toward the train station, I noted that Kenneth’s moody competition seemed to be in a rather friendly mood. He even teased me that I ought not go into labor at the train station. Before I could express just how unamusing I considered that comment, I noticed that Kenneth was uncharacteristically in serious conversation with a suit-clad commuter. As I drifted closer, the man gave Kenneth a very formal handshake and headed into the station.

“Ah, Number One Mother,” Kenneth began without his usual gusto. I had forgotten my book and asked if I could please have paper. Drawing one from the pile, Kenneth told me, “Actually today is my last day.”

I must have looked shattered. “But, why??”

Evidently The Washington Express (the Post’s little brother) doesn’t pay their distributors according to any kind of schedule.

“They say it will be every two weeks, but sometimes it’s three… sometimes, I just wait. I mean, I have my retirement, but I need a little something-something.” I nodded, of course he did.

All this time, I had thought that Kenneth did his job as a sort of public service. Not that I think people should not be paid for using their natural gifts, but I simply never considered that this was also a job for him. Would a grey-haired man, no matter how extraverted, really desire to spend every winter morning outside, handing out papers and mingling with strangers? I had assumed so.

I told Kenneth I would miss seeing him. We had a big hug goodbye and I wished him well. I didn’t get my usual benediction—no injunction not to do a damn thing today. Instead he told me to take good care of that baby of mine, and turned back to the small group of people who were curiously gathering around him.

Like me, these commuters wore the expression of people who had learned of a loss—the loss of something they hadn’t properly recognized that they had come to rely upon. I gazed backward as he solemnly shook hands and passed out his final batch of papers. The steady march of commuters which daily steps past construction, homeless people, and one another without taking any notice, one after another halted.

In a small town, there certainly wouldn’t be as many people whose mornings were touched by the simple, friendly warmth of a man like Kenneth. But in a small town, more than a handful would also have gotten to really know him. The pace of life and the steady flood of others moving through the station left me valuing the daily interaction for its semi-anonymous, personal benefit. It made me think of Kenneth as a minor, though lovable, character in the great film of my own life. I never thought to really get to know him as his own person until it was time for him to leave.

On Monday, I wonder how his absence will affect the steady flow of us who will charge through the station gates. Will people pause and look around for him? Will some fail to notice that their morning paper was imparted by an unfamiliar face? When habit is all that binds us, these threads of circumstance leave us only loosely tied, and then in a very lonely way. At that, I wonder if “loss” can properly be applied to what so many commuters seemed to be feeling about Kenneth’s departure. Or if rather all I’ve really spotted is a particular kind of failure—that of a kind of selfish blindness, the sort that makes a person appreciate anonymity rather than the richness of its alternative.