nothing ever stays the same...damn!!!

I went for a pedicure this week at the shop I have frequented for more than a decade and left the shop feeling very sad. Not because I did not get a good pedicure, in fact, the pedicure was perfect. I felt sad because the shop had been sold and the Vietnamese family who owned the shop was gone. The shop was all Vietnamese workers for sure, but none of them members of the family I had grown to love and admire over the years.

Mary,the family matriarch, her husband and children worked seven days a week 10 hours a day running the shop. The three teenage girls were in college studying pre-med by day and by night and on weekends they had to pull their weight at the shop. I never learned the name of the father. He was an introvert who let Mary do all the people related tasks while he tended to doing occasional manicures as well as all the paperwork and shop maintenance required. One day I saw him single handedly carrying out old pedicure chairs and replacing them with newer, and heavier, chairs. The father's English was pretty much non-existent and he did not seem interested in learning it all that much anyway. He probably thought that Mary did enough talking for the two of them. I always thought it must have been difficult being the father of 5 daughters. That fact alone could make anyone a bit speechless in any language.

If you had been to the shop more than once, Mary knew your name and she would call out a personalized greeting as you came through the door. "Hi ____ . How was your vacation in Disney World?" "Good to see you. Where have you been lately!" "Is your mother doing better now?" You felt like you were home. She ran the shop like the energizer bunny; answering the phone, doing nails, bossing the staff around, cooking up steamed vegetables in the backroom for lunch. Mary never stopped talking or moving. She had the ability to create an atmosphere where you somehow found yourself talking to the people on either side of you. Yes, you didn't know the woman next to you, but you found yourself chatting away to her, just like Mary did.

On a slow day at the shop many years ago, and there were few slow days at the shop, Mary quietly told me her story of escaping Vietnam in a small boat with several other people. They went for days without food and living in fear of capture. She would devotedly go back to Vietnam every year for a few weeks to visit her mother. One year she brought back her son back with her. We regulars were shocked. We never knew she had a son. We knew she had five daughters, three who worked in the shop and two pre-schoolers who sometimes would run about the shop screaming and laughing. The son, was tall, handsome and quiet like his father, and the women in the shop loved him, while the daughters were as graciously vivacious as their mother. They always wore the latest fashions in shoes, piercings and tasteful tattoos, and would complain quietly to you as they polished your toes about what a taskmistress their mother was, how she expected them to get straight A's and work nights and weekends, all of which they did. They would tease her mercilessly however, about her bad English: perhaps this helped them feel a little control over the demanding lives they had been born into.

Even though the new massage chairs, which manage to massage all of you, including your London derriere, are marvelous, I decided I will find a new shop. The good memories are just too strong and painful. All the faces are strangers now and the shop is dead quiet. I couldn't even find the courage to ask what happened to Mary and her family because I just wanted to be able to close my eyes and have them all come back. Besides, none of the workers seemed to speak English very fluently. Granted, things run more smoothly and efficiently at the shop now, but the character and personality of the place are gone. Even the wonderfully tacky paintings have been taken off the walls and the little altar to Buddha, which always had fresh foods surrounding him everyday day, has been replaced with shelves of more polish. Instead of a greeting you are told to sign your name in a book as you come through the door. Mary could always remember who was next in line! I hope Buddah helped the family make a small fortune when they sold the very successful shop and I hope they are all happy and healthy and not working so hard!