Dorothy Personal Essay Draft

I repeated the same mundane phrase that I really only recited when my manager was around, “And if you apply for a Nordstrom credit card you can save 10% today!” I scanned the screen for the total and told the customer, “That will save you over $90!” Had I actually just convinced someone to spend nearly $1,000 on a baby stroller? My hands took the customer’s card and entered the information and my mind buzzed around the transaction that just took place. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that my hands had helped mother’s tie their babies to their backs with nothing but a piece of fabric?

When I first returned my grandpa handed me a large Diet Coke, with lime, that welcomed me home. My sister gently brushed through my tangled hair while my mom’s hands sorted through a suitcase full of long skirts and uneaten granola bars. My fingers sped through T9 texting on a small flip phone, because something about an iPhone seemed daunting and yet unimportant at the time.

Selling overpriced baby strollers was not the only thing that I did at Nordstrom. I ran my hands over jackets and shirts that cost as much as a year's supply of rice in the place that I once called home. I wandered into the makeup section where different sales associates tried to match foundations that would cover up the countless freckles that had recently surfaced on my skin. I enjoyed meeting my dad and brother for lunch each day and hearing about what our different jobs entailed. Occasionally, my brother would mention how he was able to use the Spanish he had learned on his mission to help customers.

I once was able to share a brief moment of helping someone in their native language of Portuguese. I shared how I had lived in Cape Verde, and with a puzzled look, she asked if I liked one of their main dishes, cachupa. I remembered my hands scooping this fish stew into a small container nearly every time that it was offered to me because I did not want it to resurface later. I told her it was not my favorite but listed a few other local favorites that I did enjoy. She smiled and told me her favorite American food was a hot dog. I laughed and told her she was welcome to come over that Sunday and eat hot dogs with my family.

While she never came, and I never even caught her name, this simple interaction left me wanting more. I wanted to use my hands for more than measuring small children’s feet in the children’s department of an overpriced store. I wanted more than pointing to a brochure about Nordstrom credit cards to customers whenever my manager was around. I took a few days off from work and drove to Los Angeles with my recently divorced friend. My hands gripped the steering wheel as she shared the emotional abuse she had endured for years. Had I not heard so many similar stories about mistreatment between spouses a few months prior? While I was no longer a missionary, I felt like some of those previous stories shared with me had prepared me to help this dear friend when it was most needed.

In Los Angeles, I received a few updates from work about who was the top seller of the day and what the goals for our sales team were. I rolled my eyes at how trivial this seemed. I visited the Los Angeles Temple Visitors Center where my hands framed my best friends face in a loving embrace after months of being apart. We laughed and cried and tried to count the days until we would be reunited in Utah once again. As I waved goodbye, I felt envious of my friend in her mid length skirt and strict missionary curfew.

“No feeling is final.” The quote from Rainer Maria Rilke echoed in my head on my flight home from LA. The last flight I had taken, that did not offer snacks or meals even though it was a transatlantic flight, was when I unexpectedly returned home from my mission and felt discouraged about the turn of events. This flight offered Diet Coke and snacks, which was comforting, but I wished the plane was taking me somewhere else other than my job back to Nordstrom. 

The words from the Rilke quote were in my mind, “Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror.” I have experineced both and was following the advice in the quote of “just keep going.” I reunited with a friend who had cookies delivered to my house and texted me everyday to wish that I would have a good day and at times I felt like I was in a Nicholas Sparks movie with the gestures that I was receiving. The beauty and terror I had experienced the past few months ensured that no feeling was final but a choice I was left with was—finishing my missionary service.

No one expected me to or really even mentioned it to me. I had a comfortable life and new
wardrobe that I had acquired while working at Nordstrom. Things seemed to be working out,
I had upgraded from my flip phone and had a boy who was texting me everyday.
However hard I tried to move on, I was constantly reminded of Cape Verde and the hands held of
people I loved there. I thought about the texture of the stray dogs I would pet, the meals I ate off of
tubberware lids, and my hands sticky with sweat, struggling to gather my hair in a ponytail.
These moments of discomfort reminded me that no feeling is final, and that my comfort of a retail
job and full nights sleep, was not what I really wanted to be doing. One text
challenged all of that, "Hi my name is Dorothy Smith and I would like to resubmit my mission papers."