I've run the bar at a Thai restaurant for a little over three years now. When I first started this job it was a struggle adjusting to how things were done on a regular basis - and it still is a challenge, to say the least. Things are done differently here and no one believes the stories I tell them about how this place operates. Now I'm at the tail end of my employment with this place and I've come to realize that it is what it is. These people simply have a different way of doing things. It works for them, but at the same time it doesn't. This is always a source of amusement for me, even in retrospect.
Having said that, these people have endeared themselves to me and I know the feeling is mutual. They've also shared their culture and family values with me and for those things I'm eternally grateful. I find it completely heartwarming when my employers and their kids show me that I've made a favorable impact on them. Things like the owner's wife telling me that whenever she has her 8 and 10 year old daughters with her when she comes in, they always ask her if I'm working and they always come up to the bar and joke around with me or ask me to draw something or help them with their homework. Melts my heart every time. Then there was the time the owner's wife told me that a woman I was dating was very mean - which I took offense to because she never even spoke to this woman. I asked her why she would say something like that to me without even saying hello to her. Her response:
"I tell you because you have the very big heart - very big heart and you don't think about that."
While I'll always have an issue with someone judging another person without knowing anything about what that person's journey is like, she made her point to me because she was telling me that she noticed things about me and up to that point I hadn't given a thought that she paid much attention to me. I joked with her that my heart wasn't very big at all and that I'm pretty mean. She was having none of that:
"You don't fool me. Why you think my kids always come running up to you when they come here, they always say you so funny and want to know if you working, if you will juggle lemons or make pictures for them? Because you have the very big heart. Kids know that about you, I can see. You listen to me, I tell something important - your heart is very big and you need to value that."
There have been many times she's made remarks like this to me, but that particular evening sticks in my mind with absolute clarity because she grabbed my wrist when I replied to her and stopped me to make her points.
I've been blessed to be exposed to the culture that is so different than mine too. I find it fascinating, deep and very moving - things like the way they see New Year's as a huge celebration and the thought they put behind it. Every year they give their employees a red envelope with money in it. What strikes me as meaningful - and much more than the money, is that the envelope itself just seems like to hold it in your hand, you're holding a thought someone has about you. That may sound a bit melodramatic, but the envelopes I've been given are beautiful - never mind what has been inside them, particularly nowadays when we live in a time where the majority of children won't experience the warmth of getting a letter or a card in the mail.
I have all but one red envelope I've been given - and the one that ended up being thrown away was pretty much an accident. I still remember the first one they gave me - I held it in my hand and couldn't stop thinking about how powerful the thought behind this seemed to me, and I hadn't even opened it to know what was inside. I watched my coworkers open envelopes, count the money inside and let the envelope drop to the ground or they would crumple it up and leave it on the bar or toss it in the trash can. I suppose the logic is not unlike the logic I had as a child when I opened a birthday card or a Christmas card before I opened a gift - gestures like that may have meant little to me as a child but for the fact that I was raised to know the value of a sincere thank you when anyone gave me a gift or did anything nice for me. I wasn't just told to say thank you, I was taught to sincerely mean it - and if my mother thought a thank you from me, or my sisters wasn't sincere, not only did we not get whatever it was that someone wanted to give us, we were talked to about why a thank you is so important.
I know the little red envelopes are just pieces of paper, but I can't get away from the thought behind them. I'm not saying I save every Christmas or birthday card I get - I don't, though I do read them and give thought to what someone is saying to me. I have these envelopes on my bulletin board and I keep them because it just feels like I'm actually looking at someone taking the time to think of me - again, never mind what was in them.
As much as I joke around about how different the place is and how it could change for the better - and I don't mean simply for my benefit, these people have welcomed me into their culture and their way of looking at things and doing things, much of which is quite different than my own. They're not going to change this for me any more than I would change for them - it's taken me this long to see that what they want here is simply to show me that we can coexist.
A little over two years ago, one of the lead guys in the kitchen passed away. I'll never forget how painful his funeral was for all of us. I'll never forget how helpless I felt seeing my boss and his wife so heartbroken. My boss is almost always smiling, but on this day he was too sad to say a word and I could see that he'd been crying a lot over the days leading up to this service. I'll never forget what his wife said to all of us before we left the funeral home that day:
"Please listen everybody - we will see Papa John off and send him on his way. It's very important we leave all the sadness in this room, we can't take it outside with us. Please say goodbye for now and leave all your sadness for Papa John going away from us, say goodbye and leave all the sadness in this room okay?"
I thought about how days before Papa John passed, I complimented him on his hat - a red Chinese newspaper boy hat. The next night when I came into the kitchen, he walked up to me and handed me a bag with a hat just like his in it. I asked him what it was for and he looked at me and said it was for me, what did I think it was for? I asked him why and he said it was because I told him I liked the hat. In an instant that thought made it easy to leave my sadness in the room all of us were leaving. In that instant it became easy to see that Papa John was now in a better place after a life of hard work and being sick that took him from the people who loved him.
Two weeks later, I walked in the kitchen and John's older brother, Sam was working the line just as his brother did - only for a brief moment, my heart skipped because he moved just like John did. I used to bust both of them outside smoking during slower times at work. If I saw them outside with their back to me smoking, I'd sneak up behind them and tell them they needed to quit smoking because it wasn't good for them. This became a bit of a game.
I'm writing about all of this now because days ago I worked my fourth Chinese New Year party. This one was wonderful and completely heartwarming. It's amazing to see three different cultures of people come together as a bit of a family and it made me realize how small this world really is. Perhaps my favorite memory of this night was getting to see Sam after nearly a year of not seeing him. I was sad to hear him tell me he'd been sick with asthma. Sam quickly turned this around and told me that he quit smoking and how he never forgot how I always told him I wanted him to quit. He told me that he always used to get angry at me for telling him to quit, but now he said he knows why I told him that every time I saw him smoking - which was alot:
Me: why do you think I always told you to quit?
Sam: I know you told me because you are my friend. Thank you for telling me. I quit, I don't smoke now no more!
So now here I am about to stop working at this place again and knowing that for all the craziness this place can be, I'm actually a bit sad because there are wonderful people here and I've had some wonderful experiences in this place. I'm probably the most picky man on the planet with the food in a place like this - but now I associate the things I do like about this kind of food with some memories that I hope I will always have. There you have it - this is why I can't bring myself to throw away some little red envelopes. Silly isn't it?
