Crazy Wilma

She’s off her rocker.  Or more accurately, she’s on her scooter.  She makes her way through town, sometimes weaving sometimes zipping, on a bright yellow scooter, her salt and pepper hair saluting in the wind, her long coat soaring behind:  Crazy Wilma.  For the longest time I didn’t even know if her name was really Wilma, but that’s what the kids called her, so I just went with it.  I don’t think there’s a soul in the Snow Globe who doesn’t have a Crazy Wilma story, and I find myself with mixed convictions about it. 

On the one hand, how do you not laugh?  During the time my husband was the Public Works director he had his first Wilma encounter while reading her water meter.  She stormed out of the house in her bathrobe and demanded of him, “Are ya tax collectin’, or gopher huntin’?”  Now call us crazy ourselves, but as he told me the story over dinner, something didn’t sound quite right.  The moment we opened our mouths about it (oh no, small-town gossip!) other stories got loose.  The time she darted into someone’s house unannounced and asked if she could have their doormat; The time she parked her scooter right in someone’s way and when they looked at her through their perfectly respectable glasses she barked, “Get out of my way Four Eyes!”; The time she went riding on her scooter in her bathrobe without anything underneath, so it flapped around exposing things it’s best not to be too descriptive about.  Just yesterday she yelled at one of my daycare clients, a grandmother in her 50’s, “Going home to get your bikini?”  It’s funny, and laughter is good. 

On the other hand, this year as winter melted away and seeped through spring into slow summer days, it became apparent that Wilma is becoming more restless and more bold.  Wilma encounters have been frequent and that can’t help but be a bit worrisome.   I had to address the subject with the children at my daycare as they were sitting around the table having a snack.  The conversation revolved around Crazy Wilma, and how she warned two of the boys to be careful because an “old lady” was watching them.  That could be scary, and scary is bad. 

Or at the very least, scary deserves caution.  I found myself sending up a quick prayer for guidance to compose the right words for explaining mental illness in a respectful manner.  I had to begin by acknowledging that I laugh too.  And then I tried to help them imagine how scary it must be for Wilma herself, to have disconnected thoughts running around in her head much like she runs around on her scooter.  Then I asked them to call her just Wilma, instead of Crazy Wilma, and to be polite if she speaks to them but to stop and talk to her under absolutely no circumstances.

I couldn’t do much more than that, other than to direct them to take any further questions to their grown-ups.  But to be honest, we grown-ups are still working on our own understanding.  Imagine,  if  you will, a small-town committee meeting.  We are discussing Independence Day festivities for the Snow Globe.  And in stroll Wilma and her husband, Mr. Wilma.  We are all caught off guard except  Karen the Postmistress, who is quite aware of the possibility that our evening may be a bit out of the ordinary, due to an earlier Wilma encounter in the Post Office during which she extended an invitation to attend the meeting.

With much helpless shoulder-shrugging and eye-raising we carry on with our meeting:  How many pounds of sausage do we need for breakfast? ; Did anyone remember to remind the Christensen girls that they’re singing the national anthem? ; Do we have a pooper scooper to follow little Hannah-dressed-like-Sacajawea on her horse in the parade?  Meanwhile Wilma behaves herself.  Mostly.  Except for the time she gets up and starts folding Karen’s collar and combing her hair.  “So you’ll look nice for the pictures” she declares as she settles back in her folding chair.  And the time she lays her head on the table and laughs wildly, chortling something about Bingo.  Not to mention the fact that she spends most of the meeting discoursing with herself, or perhaps her other self, about we’re not sure what.

We were all behaving ourselves with admirable manners, and then happened a moment that made me very proud of the people of the globe.  You see, Wilma’s husband is a small, quiet man who has lived here for more than a few years.  I went to high school with his computer-geek son and his meekly pretty daughter who I recall sang like a bird.  There was once some intense but now forgotten gossip about his first wife and then she went away, leaving him a single father.  Somewhere along the way he acquired Wilma and evolved to become an apt partner for her, strange himself in a mild way.  Marc, a member of our group recently returned home from his life in a place more densely populated, also remembered the daughter who sang.  And he remembered the part I had forgotten—the father who amplified her talent.  As the rest of us were trying to act nonchalant while exchanging subtle What-the-Hell-Are-They-Doing-Here glances, Marc asked Mr. Wilma, “Do you still have your microphone and speakers?”

Crazy Wilma’s husband, once blond but now balding, once accomplished but now bumbling, was silent and confused.  But finally he broke into a beaming grin and stammered, “Yes….I think in my computer room.  Yes.  Yes I believe I do have an amplifier and a microphone…and I have speakers.  And…you caught me off guard but I could maybe put it all together for you.”  He used to provide sound for our school concerts, where his daughter was a shy but soft shining star.  Wilma beamed too, nodded vigorously, answered a question the rest of us couldn’t possibly hear, and the meeting went on.  Independence Day came and Mr. Wilma did not produce the microphone we needed in order to announce the winner of the Apple Pie Bake Off.  It didn’t matter.

What mattered was that brief moment when he felt included and useful, when a person who shared some of his history remembered who he was.  What mattered was the brand new scooter he and Wilma bought and rode so proudly in the parade.  What mattered was how the rest of us got a glimpse into a life we don’t understand…a  glimpse just clear enough to remind us there is value in that life.  In the Snow Globe it matters because Dana at the gas station has taken the time to figure out  if you address Wilma by her “other name,” she can be coaxed into pleasant conversation, and because Karen the Postmistress saw fit to let Wilma fuss over her hair without cringing.  Because Marc remembered Mr. Wilma has a talent and a daughter somewhere in his past.

I said before that I had mixed convictions, and that’s because I feel strongly both the humor and the sadness in the situation.  Until I sat with my fellow committee members at a Snow Globe meeting I was worried that Wilma would get worse and worse until someone got hurt.  Now I understand that we take care of our own, and that includes Crazy Wilma.  Maybe we’ll do it by staying out of the way of her scooter, or maybe by minding our surprised manners when the two of them show up where they aren’t expected.  Or maybe we’ll have to find help for Wilma on some excessively off-balanced day in our connected future.  In any case, we should learn the lessons put before us.  This lesson is wrapped with humor but in the middle is insight into respect, into that moment we may be called upon to show compassion and responsibility for another, simply because we live our lives in the same small, sparkling place.