The Elevator

In Staten Island, across the river from the Big Apple, there is probably still an elevator in service that abides in my memory from a time more than twenty-five years prior to what I call ‘the now’ of my life. I’m betting it still faithfully carries its residential passengers from the ground to the upper floors, and then back down again. I’ve taken the elevator in nameless places across this country, yet this one stands out above all others for a memory etched therein so many years ago.

I was living in the Big Apple, and on a lark I took the ferry across the harbor to visit a friend who had recently moved into an apartment. Forgoing the excessive rent in Manhattan, he and his wife had chosen the outer borough despite the double-legged, water-borne commute he would face each day to get to the school we both attended on Governor’s Island. He had received his last shipment of furniture and boxes, and asked me to come over and help him get them up to their 16th-floor apartment. I met him in the small parking garage right up the street from the ferry terminal, and of course his boxes were well-packed and heavy. Grabbing two in a stack, I headed for the elevator doors located in the basement parking lot.

The trip in the elevator would not have proven memorable had we simply went all the way up to his floor, but as luck would have her say, we stopped on the lobby level. Several people entered before the doors swished closed, and I found myself pushed into the back wall, boxes in hand, and doing my best not to crush them into someone’s back. A pretty girl was in front of me, petite enough to be much shorter than me if you can believe it, and I caught an unusual movement just below her neck. Upon a closer evaluation, I discovered it was a snake! Not a small one, mind you, but a python of some sort, and the warmth of the elevator, heated by close quarters of the crowded passengers, had caused him to stir and take notice—particularly of me!

People in big cities are much unlike the ones you are likely to meet in a small town like McNeill. You don’t speak unless spoken too, and that applies especially to one imbued with my terminal accent. It could surely frighten the natives—they ponder immediately upon things like family intermarriage and segregation, etc. And unfortunately, being in a larger apartment complex, we made a few more stops on the way up. At each opening and closing of the doors, the snake became more and more interested in the cracker from down south. I, in turn, pressed myself harder against the wall and tried to move sideways to avoid his reptilian curiosity. Finally he began to slide slowly over the girl’s delicate shoulders toward the boxes in my momentary care. I say momentary, because I dropped both while instructing those northern apartment dwellers in a sanguinary rendition of the timeless (and well-accented) rebel yell.

In the pandemonium that ensued, miraculously, no precious box contents were damaged and the snake was drawn much closer to his mistress—and I’ll leave it at that. And other than enduring a few aside glances of contempt for breaking the code of silent decorum in elevators, I was none the worse for wear. She assured me the snake was harmless, and gentle, and many other endearing adjectives that only a serpent-owner would use. By the time we arrived on the designated floor, she and I knew each other better and over coffee the next afternoon we began a friendship that would last for several months, although afterward merely in the form of pen pals.

The relationship, if you are wondering, was decidedly platonic in nature. She referred to me (in an affectionate manner) as her ‘favorite rube from down south’; and I to her as my ‘snobby WASP from a less-than-important borough of the big city.’ In the end, we were close in agreement on many topics, including those dangerous areas associated with politics. And I always paid her the courtesy of asking about the health of her serpentine counterpart when we corresponded. I lost contact with her not long after I met my future wife, yet those conversations are still vivid in my memory in part due to the things we certainly disagreed upon.

She didn’t believe in G_d and felt religion was something for others but not her. I recall she referred to it in such terms as ‘fairy tales’ or at the very least—useless myths from a bygone age. I can honestly say that her arguments never affected my opinions or mindset, but sadly, my own testimony could be described in the same manner from her point of view. I know nothing more today that I could have said back then to change her mind; and my only hope is that something moved her heart over the years to reconsider her stance.

It’s hard to believe the unbelievable. A G_d that loves us so much that He sent His only Son to redeem us from sin and provide for us an eternity with Him is hard to comprehend when viewed by the heart of one who knows only the world and its ways. The things I believe in are hard to grasp, absurd even, unless you know Him in a personal relationship through a faith that without which is “impossible to please Him.”

Maybe my own belief in all things spiritual was aided by growing up in the South with parents who instilled in me the knowledge of the Word of G_d. Ah, but that’s too simple. Jesus told another one who was having trouble grasping the things of G_d: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

The picture is big. It’s real. But it’s too hard to see it or even begin to comprehend its details unless you’ve been born again. Unless you do so, then it will only resemble fairy tales or myths from a bygone age. The elevator you are taking will never get you home.

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