So We Beat On, Boats Against the Current . . .

Still blogging away alongside three other talented bloggers.  Each week, one of us chooses a topic and we all post a blog entry on that topic, usually on Thursdays.  (Usually we are on time.  Usually.  Ok, sometimes.)

Here are the links to the other fabulous blogs:

Merryland Girl

Froggie 

Moma Rock  

            A few weeks ago, I asked you, my five loyal readers, to suggest possible topics for upcoming blog posts.  You blew me away with your ideas, and this week, I am going to use one.  This idea was submitted by my friend Dana Marie, who gave a little story to accompany her suggestion.  She wrote:

When [my husband John] and I were in Covent Garden in London, there were people everywhere.  We were watching musicians, jugglers, street performers, and just the holiday revelers around us.  As we were watching the hustle and bustle around us, I just started crying.  Out of the blue.  John just looked at me and said, “What the heck?”  I didn’t really know why, I just knew I had an emotional reaction to the place (and we had been there three times before).  I always feel the need to visit there even though we’d been there before.  John then suggested that maybe I was part of the place in some capacity in another life.  Of course, I looked at him like he was nuts, but I’ve thought of it many times since.  So my suggestion is, “What place draws you to it for some unknown reason and maybe what are your feelings about a previous life?”

            I tweaked Dana’s suggestion, asking my fellow bloggers whether they have ever felt this way about a person, place, or thing.  I made the previous life portion optional.  Here’s my take:

            I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in Chicago – within the actual city limits, not in the ‘burbs.  Growing up in an urban environment comes with certain plusses and minuses, as does living anywhere, I guess.  Houses sit closer together than they might in a suburb or out in the country.  You’re more likely to walk or take a public bus to school than you are to take a yellow school bus.  A streetlight will invariably shine somewhere into your house:  the living room, the kitchen, your bedroom window.  I grew up this way, and to me, these things were normal.

            It was also normal for me to see displaced people on the city streets.  (I don’t know the politically correct term, so I will alternate “displaced” and “homeless” and hope I don’t offend).  As a child, I remember a woman – I think her name was Mary – wandering my neighborhood.  Her clothes were dirty and disheveled.  Her hair was matted.  Sometimes she wore make-up, but when she did, it was smudged and uneven and clownlike.  She pulled behind her a metal shopping basket filled with bags of what I assumed to be her belongings.  She smoked cigarettes; for a time, she appeared pregnant.   I noticed Mary, obviously.  I asked my Mom about her.  I don’t remember her response, though whatever she said must have appeased me.  I wouldn’t say I worried about Mary, or worried for her, and she certainly didn’t scare me, but I kept my distance, as she talked to herself and I wasn’t sure what to make of that.  Mary was as much a part of my neighborhood as Norm, the mailman, or the guy who came by with his cart to sharpen knives, a man whose name I never knew or can no longer recall but who belonged to my neighborhood just the same. 

            And so for that reason, as I continued moving further around the city, I wasn’t too fazed by the homeless people I’d encounter.  I grew up just blocks from a major public transit hub and I rode the city bus to high school, and then the “El” train to college downtown.  I took the Blue Line to the Red Line and exited at the Chicago Avenue stop.  At the top of the stairs regularly stood another displaced person, a small, crinkled woman who liked to randomly yell out at passersby.  Her name was also Mary:  Crazy Mary.  (I know, I know, but in my defense, someone told me that was her name.  And she yelled a lot.  And we weren’t very PC back then.)  Crazy Mary kept her spot the entire four years I attended Loyola, and she became a fixture to me, standing there in front of the equally ubiquitous McDonald’s, yelling and cursing as she approached people for money.  I noticed Crazy Mary – but then again, I really didn’t.

            I moved to Los Angeles in my twenties, where homeless people lie on sidewalks in the sun and stood at the bottom of freeway ramps.  Even Ann Arbor had a homeless contingency, a group which mostly stayed to itself in a small park in the heart of the shopping and restaurant area.  Today, back in Chicago, I pass an average of six or seven homeless people on my walk from work to the train – a whopping five blocks.  In my head, I’ve assigned them names:  Change Cup Shaker (not my favorite at 7:15am), Sign Woman, Mask Guy, Have a Good Evening Guy.  The names aren’t meant to belittle:  they are signs of familiarity, of me being completely used to seeing these people every day. 

            Over the years, I’ve given small handouts, usually in the form of a few dollars to someone selling Streetwise, the magazine organized to give homeless people an opportunity to work and earn some money.  But unfortunately, neither I nor anyone I know can afford to give money to every single displaced person every single day.  And many people would say it’s not a good idea, anyway.  I don’t know.  I don’t know why these people are on the street, whether they are scammers or they truly need help, whether they have a place to eat or sleep.  And so I’ve assumed the mien of the weary/wary urban dweller and learned to politely just keep walking.

            Well, that’s what I usually do, anyway.

            But a few months ago, I noticed a man who sits on a corner I pass every day as I walk to my train after work.  He is young so far as displaced people tend to go; I’d put him in his early 30s.  He sits cross-legged on the sidewalk leaning up against a light post, and he holds a sign about how he and his family have hit a rough time and he’d appreciate any help.  He’s neatly dressed if not a bit grimy, and his clothes are weather appropriate, though his boots have seen better days.  He tends to look down when we walk past, quietly holding his sign.  He doesn’t shake a cup or wish us a good night.  He just sits and waits.

            And for a reason I cannot explain, I have been drawn to him since the day I first saw him.

            For many weeks, I have tried to figure out why.  Does he remind me of someone?  He’s bearded, and I don’t know many men with beards.  Is it his age?  The look on his face?  I had – and have – no idea.

            As the holidays approached, I suddenly had this urge to help Young Bearded Guy.  I could not articulate why.  What made him any different than the guy with the change cup or the woman with the sign, or the guy who plays the drums?  For weeks, I waged an internal battle:  was it the right thing to do?  Why did it feel so important, so urgent? 

            Finally, a few weeks ago, I gave in.  Young Bearded Guy doesn’t have a cup or container, so I took out a small note card and threw in a few dollars and I walked toward the train.  I missed the cross light at the intersection where he sits, which gave me ample time to approach him.  I stood in front of him and said, “Hi.”  He looked up, and I handed him the card.  He looked at it and at me and he said, “Thank you.  Thank you.  God bless you.”  His voice was different than I’d expected:  higher, softer.  I said, “You’re welcome,” and I moved on.

            On the front of the card, I’d written, “Happy New Year.”  Inside, I’d jotted a small note.  I said that I knew what I was giving him wasn’t much, but I hoped it helped and that he could buy something he wanted or needed.  I also said that when things were better, I hoped he would pay it forward.  I signed it from “a friend.”  I didn’t stand and watch him open the card, though I did look back at one point and it appeared he was, indeed, opening it.

            As I crossed the street, I was surprised to find that instead of feeling better about giving him the card, I felt worse.  Not because I’d changed my mind or thought I’d made a mistake, but because I think I’d been hoping that by handing him the card, I’d connect with him and realize why, exactly, I was so drawn to him.  But of course we hadn’t connected, not really.  I took my seat on the train still unaware as to why Young Bearded Guy tugged at me in a way the other six displaced people on my path did not.

            I have a few theories, but none of them strikes me as right.  My eldest daughter’s boyfriend has a beard – did he remind me of him?  Was I merely treating this young man the way I’d want someone to treat her boyfriend should he fall on hard times?  Did the beard remind me of Jesus and my eleventy billion years of Catholic schooling and Jesus’ words long since drilled into my brain about whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers?  Or maybe, as John and Dana suggested, I’m somehow connected to this man from a former walk on this Earth, and something inside of me knows this and moves toward him.

            I don’t know, and I will never know, just as Dana will likely never know why she cries in Covent Garden.

            But aren’t such mysteries part of the beauty of life?  I mean, it is so easy to take everything for granted:  the streets we walk, the people we pass each day on those streets.  It’s amazing that, every now and then, someone, something, or even some place grabs our attention and really makes us look and think and feel.  The fact we cannot explain the draw takes nothing away from the experience – why must we explain everything, anyway?

            I hope someday I stumble up my own Covent Garden, a place that draws me toward it and shakes me up and even makes me cry.  I hope that, like Dana, I am open to it – that I respect its power and follow its pull, even if I know I might end up in tears by doing so, even if my own husband turns to me quizzically and asks, “What the heck?”  Even if I cannot answer because I simply do not know.