It’s snowing and sunny in Seattle on this particular Sunday. This, by all measures, is an oxymoron. Seattle, in December, is almost always cloudy and rainy and about 40 degrees. On rare occasions it’s cloudy and snowing and 30 degrees. But it is almost never sunny and snowing in December.
I head for a coffee house so I can work on a project and feed the caffeine addiction I recently went back to. Almost everyone is bundled inside the Northwest version of a winter coat: Gore Tex, fleece and capilene. Kids are wiggling inside their snowsuits, drinking hot chocolate and laughing, mittens clipped to their sleeves.
There is an empty table near the window, covered in newspapers. Stanley – I would later come to know his name – is standing next to it, talking to a firefighter. I walk past them, snagging a seat one table away. When Stanley sits back down, he greets me in a friendly and welcoming way.
The first thing I notice about Stanley is the gray hair. He has sprinkles of it all over his chin, mixed together with the black strands. The second thing I notice about Stanley is that he is missing several teeth, which causes him to have a slight lisp when he talks. He is wearing tan slacks, sneakers and a suede jacket that goes down to his knees.
I start writing in my notebook, trying to remember all the thoughts I have for a project I’ve been thinking about. Occasionally I look up and glance around at the snow and the sunshine and the little kids wiggling themselves into and out of their snowsuits. I glance at Stanley, catch his eye, and he leans close to me: “What’s your sign?”
It’s noisy in here from all the talking and laughing and coffee grinding. It’s hard for me to hear Stanley because he talks quietly. And because he has that slight lisp from the missing teeth. And because I have trouble hearing people speak when there’s a lot of background noise. So I have to lean close and tilt my head so that my ear is in direct line with his mouth. “What was that?” I ask.
“What’s your sign? Your astrological sign? Leo?” he asks. Statistically, Stanley has a 1 in 12 chance of getting that right. Most people, when they guess anything about me, guess wrong. I don’t look white. I don’t look Asian. And I don’t look 40. People usually guess Native and 30. But Stanley guessed right.
“I can usually tell,” he says. “Plus, you’re wearing red, and your hair is like a mane.” Stanley is animated when he tells me this. He swooshes his hands about to indicate a lion’s mane and prowess. “Sometimes it’s just a good guess. But I have a good sense of people.”
I’m about to ask him something, but Stanley recognizes people walking in the door. He shouts out their names and waves to them. Sometimes he talks to himself and ropes people nearby into conversations about god and the evil ways of his old life.
After awhile, Stanley puts on his hat and scarf and buttons up his jacket. It looks like he is getting ready to fall into the sunshine and snow, but he doesn’t get up to leave. Instead, he opens the case he has on the table and flips through the pages. I look over and notice that he has a bunch of pastel portraits.
I ask him about them, and he says he draws people he sees here. He asks if he can draw me, to which I respond with “Oh, good gosh, no.” But Stanley doesn’t like my answer. Stanley grabs a piece of paper and a pastel and walks to another table with his coffee. He’s out of my personal bubble space, so I go back to writing in my notebook.
Stanley makes a few more rounds of social connection before coming back. He thanks me for sitting next to him because his ex wife has come in and he doesn’t want her to sit next to him. He doesn’t want to go back to his old ways, whatever that means. I smile and catch a few fragments of what he is drawing – it is an image of me.
“I draw for the smiles,” he says. “That’s what I do. I like to see people smile.”
After awhile, Stanley hands me a rolled up paper. It is my portrait as seen through his eyes. I don’t look at it right then and there, but I take it and place it gently on the table in front of me. I thank Stanley and smile a little longer than I might normally smile.
He goes back to drawing and talking to himself. “Oh, I remember her,” I hear him say as he waves his hands around in the air. I can see a rainbow of pastel colors smeared all over his hands.
There is a family of three sitting one table away from me. The mother is bundling the little girl into her snowsuit and tucking her pants into the rubber boots with frog faces on them. She is ready, I can tell, to make snow angels, to slide down hills, and to catch snowflakes on her tongue.
The father, who looks like a younger version of Ralph Feinnes, goes to throw away the trash when Stanley stops him. “I have a picture for you! Hold on! It’s free.” The father stops, looks at the drawing and is taken aback. He is looking at his wife and his daughter.
Stanley says he only needs a few more minutes. The family waits, patiently. Stanley draws feverishly, trying to get the colors just right, the angles just so, and the shadows perfect. He knows the family needs to leave so they can play in the snow, but he wants their portrait to be as good as he can get it. It takes another ten minutes or so, and I can tell Stanley wants more time to work on it, but he knows they need to leave.
“It could have been better. It could have better, but that’s okay,” he says as he rolls up the drawing and slips a rubber band around it. Two gentlemen who are sitting across from family ask if they can see the drawing. The father unrolls it, shows it around, and everyone is all smiles. They leave with their portrait, spilling themselves into the sunshine with their huge smiles. Stanley wanders off to talk with another regular.
I follow the family, minutes later, into the cold air, into the sunshine. There are patches of ice on the ground, and I have to work hard to avoid them. Later, I look at my portrait and I’m taken aback. Stanley has captured me in all my Leo essence.
I smile.
