THE ELEVATOR DOWN

Passing Through Mongolia America

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

It's story time with Mitch Chuzerich. Today's story, The Elevator Down. One of the two apartment building elevators has been out for weeks, leaving just a single small elevator for all the residents of our ten story building. That means many people relying on a single three by five box shaped lift to get them on and off their floors, bringing neighbors closer in an uncomfortable way that only city life can explain. When the elevator arrived for me today, the door opened, and it was empty. Perfect, I thought, and I got in. But then the elevator stopped just one floor below. The doors opened, and there standing patiently was a Mongolian family, two women, a man and two little girls, the oldest no more than five years of age, and the youngest no less than three years. They also had a ton of stuff they were lugging around. The adults looked at me, saw how my motorized wheelchair already took up a third of the elevator and, I believe, thought about whether to cram inside or just wait until it returns again. The social awkwardness hung in the air for what felt like twenty minutes, but really was just a second. I was sure they were going to say we'll take the next one. But unaware of these social cues, the two little girls just walked in as freely as two gray foxes passing easily over the Mexican American border, not noticing any imaginary barrier. They looked at me in my chair shyly and stopped at my side. I whispered a hardly audible hello, and they whispered it back. It was settled. We're all taking the elevator together, and the two women and men grabbed their boxes and bags and piled in. I kept a slight smile on my face and gazed down, trying to make everyone as comfortable as possible in an uncomfortable situation. Six people in a box and one of them, looking as inconspicuous as possible, is conspicuously in a big wheelchair that the rest are pushed up against. The elevator stopped again on the floor just below, but no one was there. It stopped again on the floor beyond that. Again, no one. We stopped at every floor going down. I imagine people got tired of waiting for the lift and decided to take the stairs instead. As we slowly made our way down, the family spoke to each other in Mongolian. There are many Mongolian families in my building, so much so the building managers post notes in what looks like Russian but is in fact Mongolian. In the nineteen forties, the Mongolian People's Republic, a close ally of the Soviet Union, adopted the Russian Cyrillic based alphabet with a couple of added letters for sounds that are unique to them. Mongolian was an important supporter of the Bolsheviks in the Revolution of nineteen seventeen. The traditional Mongolian script that preceded the current script, however, is quite beautiful. More beautiful than most Latin based alphabets. It looks like a combination of Chinese and Arabic, but simpler and more refined than both. Mongolian names are long and intimidating like U Ling Yanganseg. That's nineteen letters that together mean pink mountain flower. I know I mispronounced it. The Mongolians in my building who have told me their names, most haven't, they tend to keep to themselves and their own community, always give me the abbreviated version of their impressive names. Like Tinun. She gave me her entire name once, but I was only going to remember Tinun. She's moved away since, but I'll always remember her name. Suddenly out of the chorus of Mongolians swirling through the elevator, the youngest girl began to count in English the number of people in the elevator, pointing at each of us as she joyously went one, two, three, four, five, six. And then the older girl said no and laughed and did her own count, also arriving at six and pointing to each of us as she went along, including me. It was as though we were transported to Sesame Street, and the count had arrived to lead in this celebratory impromptu counting of numbers. The girls giggled, and the youngest casually rested her hand on the armrest of my chair. It reminded me when a bird, a chickadee, landed on the same spot several years ago as I meditated in a public garden. One of the women, like a mother concerned of a child's behavior in public, said something a Mongolian and the little girl removed her hand quickly. But no more than a couple of seconds later, her small hand returned, and the lady once again said something sharp, and the girl returned her hand to her side. I said softly that I don't mind. I didn't. But there was no response, and the elevator went down another floor. Then the girl excitedly said something to the man who was on the other side of me and placed her hand right on my knee as she did. Again her mother admonished her, and her hand quickly returned to herself. The elevator finally arrived to the ground floor, and I waited as the adults emptied the elevator of their bags and boxes. Then the two girls slowly walked out and looked back at me with a faint wave. I whispered bye bye. That was it. That's my story. And yet it was the highlight of my day. Not that my day was uneventful. Earlier in the day I strolled around the lake with one of my closest friends of thirty years. He lives just a block away, and we take this walk almost every week and we talk about everything possible under the great blue sky. Often it's the highlight of my day and even of my week. Later in the day, the whole elevator trip even began because I was heading to the train station to go to San Francisco to see a free production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the public library. And it was great. It was an overall good day. But for those few moments in the elevator, and it was much shorter than reading this account of it, with those people I did not know, speaking a language I could not speak. I felt as though I belonged, like a piece of old familiar furniture in the family room, but instead in the elevator going down. Well, that does it for story time. Leave a note or follow if you like. Until next time, be well.