everything I needed to know about meeting new people I learned from my daughter
The young man meets us in the parking lot, at the spaces reserved for guests. Before we can get out of the car, he’s walking purposefully our way, wearing a t-shirt that says, Welcome. And so it should be with God’s people, always wearing the welcome of Christ, always walking purposefully toward opportunities to love. For all our awkward angles, we feel anticipated.
“Hi, I’m Glenn,” he says, offering me a smile, while my family unfolds and reassembles behind me, us with all our chaos hanging out in loose threads. He shakes every hand, and when he reaches Riley, she says with enthusiasm, “Hi, I’m Riley, what’s your name?”
Years ago, she learned this, has it labeled as the way I meet someone new. So she always begins precisely this way, and it matters not at all what else has been said upon introduction. I chuckle a little stiffly, wondering how Glenn will handle the first sign of our eccentricity, but he hardly seems to notice. He smiles widely, as if suddenly fully seeing Riley, not her Autism, but her light.
“Hi Riley, I’m Glenn.”
“Oh hi Glenn, I’m Riley,” she says, using the way I complete an introductory conversation, entirely without the ability to discern that the repetition might be unusual, and in fact, finding it completely satisfying herself.
Glenn pauses, only just a tiny beat, as if reading her expression for humor. Seeing only open interest and Riley’s usual unconditional acceptance and affection, he grins again, wider still. “It’s really nice to meet you, Riley.”
“Oh, it’s nice to meet you too, Glenn!” She says this honestly, with joy, as he gestures expansively toward the building and we begin to follow.
And I smile as we make our way inside, considering all the relational lessons bound up in our daughter, who, with the label of Autism, also carries the assumption of social ineptness. Again and again, as I watch Riley love, I wonder if maybe for all our comparisons and filtering, we are truly the inept.
Riley’s lack of self-consciousness allows her to acknowledge people with enthusiastic abandon, and that acknowledgement is both universally needed and universally appreciated. In this age of constant posting and presentation, most of us still feel largely insignificant.
Riley’s repetition of rehearsed phrases, while it lacks the smoothness most of us aim to project, also aids her superhero memory in making a long-term imprint. Most of us have read this in pop culture lists of memory hacks, the advice to repeat a person’s name right after learning it, and Riley’s jaunty process has her mentally jotting names four times–twice auditorily and twice verbally–in the course of a first introduction. Riley also helps the other person remember her name, because in running through her scripts, she repeats her own name at least twice. Almost always, Riley’s memorized phrases move others to say her name back to her at least once. And that, I’m thinking, as we wander deeper into a new community, is why when we leave this place, Glenn will look up from a knot of people and focus his eyes a moment on us, and say, “Bye, y’all! Riley, you take care now.”
I smile, because Riley teaches me–right now and again–that smoothness and polish and admiration are the wrong aims, and that the right ones are to love, to acknowledge, and to generously welcome others with grace. She shows me that my own risky fumbling to love allows other awkward and broken people the freedom to love honestly too.
