I. Intro
'I will tell you the story about the one
hundred bucks I have in my pocket. I will pay you with this hundred bucks after
this session is over', I told my therapist when I started moving uncomfortably in the chair designated for clients.
“I will tell you the story how I made these
hundred dollars” I added and smiled.
“Ok.” said my therapist and smiled
back.
“But what is the relationship of this story
with you and me and the same space we are sharing together at this moment?”
“This will become clear at the end of the
story”, I replied, finally settling for a relatively comfortable position in the”
hot chair”.
II. First contact.
I am sitting on a high chair at a local cafe
with unlimited Internet access and I am caching up on emails from customers
accumulated from yesterday. I am thinking that I should probably buy a new
laptop while waiting for the pages to load painfully slow. I think about this
every day...
A tall woman with a sports hat approaches me
and I meet her eyes hidden behind expensive looking bi-focal.
“Excuse me?”, she says looking me straight
into the eyes, “I am not trying to hit
on you or anything..., but may I ask you for help”.
Slightly louder tone of voice that I am
feeling comfortable with, I realize. A head from the table across turns towards
my table and turns back.
Her eyes lost contact with mine for a moment
but she quickly recovers. I take a moment and wait for her to say something
else. She doesn't.
“Sure, how may I help you?”.
Her eyes don't let go of mine.
“I need to send an email with my resume but
I don't know how to attach it”, she pauses, “Can you help me?”.
She looks like she is in her late forties,
dressed as a jogger. The watch and the jewelry on her talk to me that she
could buy a laptop plus the salesman. Both - as a combo deal.
I smile a bit, “Ok, bring your laptop. I
will help you.”
She moves her shoulder slightly.
“It's ...at home.” Then a little faster,
“Are you going to be here for a while? I can go get it. I live up the street
two minutes away...”
“Sure, I will be here for a while. You can
bring your laptop and I will help you”.
“Thank you!” she says to me and smiles with
a visible feeling of relief on her face.
She starts walking towards the exit of the cafe and then she comes back
to my table.
“I am not trying to hit on you! I see the
ring on your left hand - I know you are married.”
Straight look in her eyes - locked firmly on
my eyes. Her tone of voice, I feel, is within the borders of my comfortablility
levels.
I smile. Then I say,
“Did it ever work when you did?”
“??”
“When you tried to hit on somebody at a
cafe?” I elaborate, “Did it ever work?”
She chuckles and finally I feel that she
feels comfortable talking to me.
“Never.”
II. Lessons
I am talking to a customer on the phone
holding it in one hand and with the other typing notes about the conversation
in a spreadsheet when she places her laptop next to mine and sits on the
opposite side of the high table. I smile, I show “one moment” with my pointer
and show the cell phone that I am holding as a pillow close to my year. She
nodes.
I am done with the customer and I finish
with the notes then I say,
“So?”, and I smile.
She asks me in a business-like tone of
voice,
“How much you charge per hour?”
“??”
“How much you will charge me for your time
to teach me how to send my email with an attachment and then show me basic Excel
and Power Point” she says firmly.
“I never taught computers before...”, She
caches me off guard. “...twenty dollars.”
She frowns. “Twenty is too little. I will
pay you forty”.
I smile.
“Ok”.
Latest model laptop with an aluminium cover
I notice with a little envy while she flips the beauty open. I see the latest
software flexing muscles on the HD screen.
“Right” I say, “Lets first deal with your
email.”
She is navigating clumsily with her fingers
on the little square that is supposed to be the mouse, opens the email client
and moves the laptop closer to me.
“Here, attach my resume to this email
please.”
“No.”, I look her in the eyes and smile, “I
am going to teach you how you can attach files to your emails so you can do it
in the future by yourself.”
She smiles back and says,
“Right,.”, “Teach me how please.”
III. How we share is how we are.
While I am explaining to her where to click,
how do drag and drop files, how to save and delete, she is telling me bits and
pieces of her life. She is a fifty-four. I was never good at telling women's
age.
I tell her that I am forty-seven. She is
recently divorced after a thirteen year of abusive marriage that disintegrated
after her ex chocked her. She has 'two beautiful ten-year-old twin girls', I am
telling her that I have a six years old girl.
She can now create a basic spreadsheet, save
the file, attach it to an email and test-send it to herself.
“It is so simple, its ridiculous”, “I am so
stupid!”
She quickly recovering and is telling me,
“I was a stay home mom for ten years and I
never liked technology”.
I smile and tell her,
“Are you starting to like it now when you
see how simple it is?”
She's typing in the rows and hits Enter with
passion.
“Yup...”, “It's so easy”.
Her husband is rich and his family is very
rich. She signed a pre-nuptial agreement and was about to be left with nothing.
Her ex agreed only to pay the minimum alimony for the kids.
The divorce judge decided that she and the
kids get half of the proceeds from the sale of the house.
“Quite an ordeal” I say and I feel that I
like her.
“She is a fearsome fighter and a survivor” I
am thinking.
“I saved my kids and this is what matters”,
she looks me in the eyes for a validation and I nod gladly I give it to her.
She is now working on her first Power Point
presentation adding an image and then the text. She is advancing quickly and
she is enjoying the process of learning and trying new things on her laptop.
I notice that her laptop is working on
battery only. Something that my old awkward looking, clunky ten years old
machine is never going to do anymore. I am not buying a new battery as it costs
more than a new machine. I realize that my laptop was born in the year when her
daughters were born.
I share this with her and she laughs a
little bit.
“I am feeling so comfortable with you.” she
says, “I feel that I can tell you anything. What do you do for a living?”
“I am a risk adviser for start-up loan
companies and I am studying for a psychotherapist.”
“Now I notice that most of the time you are
asking me questions and that I am talking and talking”
“But, you can never be my psychotherapist”,
she is looking me in the eyes.
I don’t ask the question she perhaps is
expecting me to ask and she is not elaborating why I can never be her
therapist. Her eyes go back to the screen.
IV. Two and a half hours later
She can now effortlessly create files,
delete them, move them in different folders. She is sending emails with
multiple attachments. It just started raining. She looks up and says,
“Oh, crap” and then focuses back on the task
I gave you – import picture into a slide.
I am feeling like I know her for years.
“I am going to the washroom”, she declares.
“Don't run away with my new laptop” and she smiles.
“I can't.” I say and smile back at her,
“It's raining too hard”
She comes back and places a plate with a croissant
in front of me.
“You must be hungry”, I smile, say nothing
and start eating. She starts eating the croissant she brought from the cafe bar
for herself.
“You know what?”, she tells me after she
finishes her croissant, “I want to invite you, your wife and your kid to a tea
party at my place”
I look her in the eyes.
“The kids will play; I will meet your wife
and I will tell her that I want you to give me computer lessons. I am a lector
at a college and I will have to learn how to work with technology. Until now my
brother was helping me with my presentations. I want you to teach me but first,
I want your wife to know and be Ok with this”
“Sure.” I say, “But you know that I am not a
qualified teacher”
“I don't care, I learned so much from you”.
I nod my understanding.
VI. Finale
She closes the screen panel of her laptop.
The lessons are given. The life stories – shared. When exchange personal
emails. She is telling me that after the holidays she will send me an email to
invite me and my family to her house.
She fishes up from her back-pocket
banknotes, “Two and a half hours at $40.00 per hour”, she gives me one hundred
dollars.
I say nothing and smile. Then, I put the
money in my shirt pocket and say, “Thank you.”
“It's raining, do you want me to drive you
with my car?”, she is asking me.
“No. I am close by”, I say.
“Are you sure?”
Am I feeling something. I am looking at her
face expression, her eyes, body posture...
I am activating every possible antenna I
have access to.
No. I don't feel anything other that a
concern that I (and my old laptop) will get wet.
“I am sure.”
She is waiving at me, walking out from the
south exit of the cafe and I am waiving back at her exiting from the north
exit.
VI. The story about one hundred dollars
My therapist waited for me for a few moments
after I finished my story to give me time to say anything else. I don't.
“It is a good story; you should probably
write it”
“I will”, I told her.
“What is the relationship of this story with
you and me and the same space we are sharing together at this moment?”.
“My therapist is a therapist even when she
is sleeping”, I thought and started.
“You are my teacher at the Institute, you
are my therapist too. I undergo my own therapy with you but I also am learning
from you”.
“Get out of your mind and go to your
feelings.”
I start again, “I feel that with her, I was
the therapist I wish to be one day in the future”
“Better” my therapist told me.
“Sitting here with you, I am feeling that I
connect with you the teacher and the therapist as I connected with this woman
yesterday”.
My therapist nodded.
“I am feeling curious about you as I am
curious about her. I also kept my boundaries. I refused to go with her in her
car.”
“How do you feel about her now?”
“I am still curious about her”, I responded.
“Do you feel that she was hitting on you?”
“I feel that she was.” I said, “A little
bit...”
My therapist took a pause. I stayed in the
pause, examining my feelings in the moment with my therapist in her space where
therapy goes about a woman I met yesterday. A woman that I made a contact with.
