Thank You For Teaching Me

     

 Recently I had lunch with a wonderful man I'm honored to know; my former employer. We'd met one day at Maple Restaurant, an old establishment in Ambridge, the small, homey town I grew up in. All the pleasant talk and chatter with him brought me back. Back to a time when I was young, the whole world before me.......

      When I graduated business school at eighteen, I was faced with the daunting task of job hunting. What to do? Go on interviews that the school would provide, all of them in the downtown Pittsburgh area? No way.
     As chance would have it, my mother was looking through the paper one day and spotted an ad: Dental Assistant, will train....it read. When she saw it was the dentist I'd gone to as a little girl, she encouraged me to call.
     Dental Assistant? What on earth?
     Thirty some years later, I've never looked back. The dental field has been extremely rewarding for me, teaching me compassion, patience, caring and understanding.
     The man who would help me learn these lessons and many others is my former boss, Dr. Alvin Zamba. A quiet, good soul, this man would teach me more about life, people, work ethics and goodness than I would ever learn elsewhere. With his gentle approach to our patients in the dental office we worked together for twenty seven years, Dr. Zamba showed me that honesty and hard work are the traits we should all strive for.
     The dental work we put out through the years was impeccable. A periodontist, gum specialist, in our area would call Dr. Zamba, "Beaver County's Most Well-Kept Secret". And he was. Our fees were reasonable, and the work of his hands, incredible. Our satisfied patients would tell me in private, how pleased they were with their appointments.
     In all the years working with Dr. Zamba, I would not miss a day's work. I looked forward to the bond and closeness with the elderly patients we saw on a daily basis. I listened to their problems, hopes and dreams. I laughed with them and cried with them.
     Several times, the doctor and I went to the bedside of a sick, older man in his own home. He didn't have much longer to live, but his family wanted him to have dentures made for whatever time he had left. I think of that now, how my boss took the time out of his busy day, and the comfort of working in our office to do this for the family.
     Yes, there were testy moments, as there were only the two of us working together for many years, and maybe my temper wanted to flare at times, but keeping myself in check was also another lesson. First and foremost, respect of my employer, and learning to hold my tongue when I may not have agreed with something.
     I miss those days, a simpler time in a small town, in an old-fashioned office decorated in antiques with no frills, no computer, no exciting major equipment. Only the tools and skills of a wonderful man, a man I am pleased to have called "boss" for many years.
     Here's to you, Dr. Zamba, in thankfulness for all I learned at your side.

Everyone has a story

     My mother has always said:  Everyone has a story. I found that to be true. Do you watch people around you, really watch them?  Do you listen though, as they speak?  This perhaps is  most difficult to do.  For I think when we pause, letting another person tell you their story, then we can truly walk a bit in their shoes, seeing where they come from.
     He was the strange man in the neighborhood.  People referred to him as "mildly retarded" in those days.  It was back in the late sixties.  I was eight years old.
     My girlfriend and I would be playing outside.  Whether it was bike riding, hopscotch, countless games of pretend, we would see him walking toward us in the distance.
     "Run," we would say in unison, "Hide."  For we knew to be cornered by Terry would mean at least an hour of his tragic, neighborhood stories.  He had no friends, nobody to talk with. 
     I asked my mother about him.  She was living in her own world of depression in those days.  Yet she said something which surprised me.  She asked if I would try being kind to him.  Let him talk instead of running away when he appeared.
     "Easy for you to say," I thought.  She wasn't the one who had to stand there and listen as he droned on and on about the sadness going on behind our neighbor's closed doors.
     No matter what Mom was going through in her life, she never failed to be compassionate.  It was something she instilled in me at a very early age.  She was trying to turn me into a listener.  An observer of the world.  In doing so, I would learn so much more than what outward appearances showed.
     The next time Terry appeared, I let him talk.  He hardly made eye contact as he told us about an old lady down the block, and the ambulance that whisked her away.  He seemed to only speak of the bad things going on around us.  But he seemed grateful to have a listening ear.
     The more I thought about it, Mom was right.  My young heart broke for this man, this tragic soul who had nobody except his family to care what he talked about.
     I stopped running, and started listening.  Daily he would rattle on and on with his stories of sorrow.   I saw the world as Terry was seeing it, through a heart and soul of a man who would never really be a man.
     Years later, I would think of him, wondering what had happened to him.  I know he changed me in many ways as a person.   He taught me compassion.  He taught me patience.   It was this compassion and patience that would stick with me all my life; truly listening when people tell their own stories. 
     I hope Terry had a good life.