Who Am I When No One is Watching?
The other evening, I had my character tested. I almost decided to ignore someone in need. I would tell you that's not who I am, but sometimes we all get so wrapped up in what we're doing and where we think we need to be next it becomes incredibly easy to just not live up to who we know authentically are. Exiting the Target for what felt like the millionth time that week, my baby gurgling and cooing, I caught it out of the corner of my eye: and all-too-familiar cardboard sign with black marker writing. A voice asked if I had any change. I hardly even looked in the direction of the voice. Usually I would just automatically give the person a dollar. This time I instead thought about all of the adoption fees we still owed, the amount of money I just spent on things that we needed, and any number of reasons that giving a dollar was not feasible. I simply responded "sorry I don't have anything," thinking that it would be too complicated to unpack the diaper bag and find my wallet. As I neared the trunk of my car, which was opened by the push of a button on my key ring, I got a better look at the person who asked me for change. It was a young woman with a baby on her chest. I was a little disgusted with myself that I hadn't simply given her a dollar or more. I was also disgusted with myself that it would matter who it was asking. I finished packing my car with the things that I had freshly purchased, that I thought we needed at home, put the baby on my hip, and started walking back toward the store with a five dollar bill in my hand. When I got within about 10 feet of the woman, someone in a large truck squealed past the begging woman, shouting out their window “shut your legs!”
In her whisper of a Castilian accent, the woman responded without malice, “Thank you.”
As I neared her, I stretched out my hand with the money and simply said “I'm so sorry you're in this situation.”
The woman said to me, “God bless you.”
We stood there and talked a little bit about our children. Her son was almost exactly a month younger than my daughter. I don't know how the woman got into her situation. I don't know if she was running a scam. All I know is that I wept and held my baby as tight as I could as I walked back toward my car. Obviously I can't control what happened to, is happening to, or will happen to that woman. My devastation over her situation reminded me of lyrics to the song that Garth Brooks wrote for the Oklahoma City bombing:
http://rare.us/rare-country/garth-brooks-hit-a-nerve-with-this-tribute-to-the-oklahoma-city-bombing-victims/ "I hear them saying, 'You'll never change things no matter what you do it's still the same thing.' But it's not the world that I am changing, I do this so this world will know it does not change me."
