No Final Feeling

"Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final." Rainer Maria Rilke

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? 

The first neighborhood I lived in while in Cape Verde. 

When I first came down the escalator, 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.

When I returned home from my missionary service for the LDS Church, it was abrupt and unsettling. Usually the reuniting of families after a mission is joyous and filled with tears after two years or eighteen months apart with limited contact. I had not served the full time I was assigned and after weeks of being sick and my once well fitting clothes hanging off my body, it was decided that I should come home. The stigma around an early returned missionary is not as welcoming as one would think. People pry unintentionally wanting to know if perhaps you broke a missionary rule or could not handle the demands of learning a new language. I decided it would be best to keep busy so started working at Nordstrom in downtown Salt Lake. 

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. 

Me as a missionary in Cape Verde. 

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 missionary friend in her mid length skirt and strict curfew, her missionary service uninterrupted with sickness.

“No feeling is final.” The quote from Rainer Maria Rilke echoed in my head on my flight home from L.A. A flight attendant with perfectly manicured hands poured Diet Coke into a small cup and handed me a package of crackers. I thought about my flight back home from Cape Verde only a few weeks prior, where no snacks were offered and I spent the majority of the time trying to read my scriptures and make a plan for the next few weeks. This plan did not include working at Nordstrom, but included days full of service and time spent with loved ones. Reality soon hit, however, and I was left with doctors appointments and a retail job. 

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 an old friend who had cookies delivered to my house and texted me everyday to wish that I would have a good day—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,

Serving an LDS mission again. 

I had upgraded from my flip phone and had a boy who was texting me everyday. My parents knew the heartache I faced when coming home and told me it might be best if I decided to stay home. My bishop asked if I would be around that summer so that he could assign me a calling. 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 tupperware 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."