Laughably Inadequate
That's how it feels
Riding the 1 train uptown in New York, I got off at 50th Street, on the edge of Times Square. As I moved towards the exit stairs I was thinking only about the cool pair of women, about my age, who had been sitting across from me on the train and how I wanted to slow down to let them get ahead of me because I was embarrassed to have them behind me as I clogged up the narrow stairs with my two-feet-on-each-step method of going up. In the midst of rehabbing an arthritic knee, I have no other option but this slow and awkward gait.
I recalled a phrase I learned and loved in 8th grade Latin class: infra dig. It was indeed beneath my dignity to hobble in front of cool peers. (I do apparently have a lot of pride because when I get to the top of a staircase, I walk faster than a marathon runner to prove to anyone observing me and feeling sorry for me that I am not old and declining but in fact I have a very temporary problem that simply, and only, renders my knee unable to do stairs for now.)
So that’s what I was thinking about when I saw her, a woman sitting on a bench on the side of the platform sobbing, though inaudibly. Her face was contorted in pain; her cheeks were wet; her shoulders were slumped; her hands held a plastic cup with a few dollars in it; her duffle bag gaped open revealing what looked like plastic food containers that had long ago held something fresh.
I knew I needed to turn back and see what I could do.
As I approached she half-heartedly asked if I had any money. I said, “Sure; I’ll give you something…,” but it was obvious that money wasn’t the real or only need.
I don’t know (still) what the real need or feeling or situation was. But I know it was as deep as the deepest ocean. And I knew as I looked at her that I wouldn’t be able to do one thing about the depth of that ocean of grief she was swimming in.
I asked if I could say a prayer for her. She sobbed more as she quickly reached out her hand to me, her fingernails thick and gnarled and yellow. I grabbed that searching hand as I asked her if there was something particular I could pray for. I think she answered me, but I don’t know what she said, and it’s possible she was just groaning out more pain wordlessly.
I asked her name, and she replied “Jennifer.” I thought to myself that I don’t know many Black women named “Jennifer” but that her probable age sure fit the “Jennifer” popularity wave of the 70s. It was a good way to disassociate from the gaping wound of _______ in front of me on the bench.
The words I prayed were, I hope, hitting the secret target in her soul, since I asked the Holy Spirit to guide me, and I do believe that He/It knows the depths of each of us, and I sure knew that I had no idea what she needed. (I don’t even begin to know what I myself need.)
I heard the words “sweet girl” come out of my mouth. I heard “I pray she would know, God, how much you love her.”
She never stopped sobbing. Tears mixed with mucus ran down her face. I saw that she didn’t have a lot of teeth.
As I ended the prayer and moved towards digging through my backpack for some money, she said a clear, “I love you,” the first thing I had understood clearly (through her tears and lack of teeth) other than her name.
I told her I love her too.
And I do. But of course I only love her in an emotional reaction, common humanity, empathetic way.
Not in a sacrificial way. Not in a way that will change one damn thing of Jennifer’s crappy circumstances.
What sort of love leaves someone on a bench, down in a hole in the ground, still sobbing and alone?
I started to walk away but then turned back to, well, I’m not sure what I was going to do. Say more words? Grab her hand and pull her up the stairs with me (two-feet-on-each-step be damned)? Take her to a hospital/shelter/police station? For what? I don’t even know what she needs.
It felt like the only (il)logical response would be to take her home, give her my bed and my weighted blanket, make her some hearty stew (I hate stew but it seems like a good response to tears), distract her with some Bravo TV, listen to her and try to solve all her needs with the privilege I have of a network and bank accounts.
Instead I kept going. I walked up the stairs two-feet-on-each-step. I called my son and, through some tears of my own, told him about Jennifer and said, “I just left her there sitting on a bench; that’s what I did. This isn’t okay.”
Then I changed the subject to something relatively newsy and cheery. Because I can change the subject. And because I can find cheer in my life even on the hardest days.
I hope Jennifer can too, someplace in her life. I keep wondering about the “What’s next” for her and even the “What was next that night?” for her. But I’m not so sure she can find cheer or has found it. I know almost nothing about her.
It’s a theme here in my writing to wrestle with my own impotence in the face of so much need. Partly I do it for accountability. Partly I do it because I want to think with others about Martin Luther King’s admonition relative to the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. He said:
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.*
It does not do one damn thing for Jennifer for me to go away to think about how to improve conditions generally for more people or even how to live more equitably myself.
I hope that I can take her “I love you” as a sign that she felt love, even if I offered it imperfectly and with some trepidation.
It’s incumbent on us to be willing to be the hands and feet and voices of Jesus.
But it honestly doesn’t feel like enough sometimes.
God help my unbelief and my hubris that I ought to be able to fix things somehow. But let me not stop trying, or caring. Even when I hobble.
*This famous quote comes from Martin Luther King Jr.'s landmark speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," delivered on April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York City.
Wow. Thank you for your raw honesty.
I'm not sure there is any firm answer to your query...I responded once to a woman literally with the shoes off my feet, then bought her groceries and took her home. 6 years later with lots of my time and money and heart, forming a program to support her and her family with an extended full-bodied support system, she still wasn't out of danger. A lifetime of habits, lack of education, a limited mental ability and societal limits and resources made me a devoted supporter of early intervention, literally like in New Zealand, that begins with prenatal care, includes whole families and includes nutrition, counseling, education and housing. Ironically, the Mormon relief system is personal and effective. Our system is non-personal, systemically uncoordinated and poorly monitored. So, I, too, hold hands and listen and comfort and give what I can when I can and use our systems whenever possible with constructive feed back along the way. II just do what I can and what is possible and don't spend any time in regret. And, on a final note, 15 years later, that original woman and I were still friends when she died and had been, in the end regular company for each other that lasted. We ended as we began holding hands and crying together, listening to one another and supporting each other whenever possible, heart to heart. She said to me over and over the best times were when we cooked and ate together, talked, laughed, and rubbed each others' feet! (we wore the same very large shoes and shared constant hurting feet..). We were, in the end FRIENDS and joined heart to heart. All I could do wasn't enough to lift her from her circumstances but the "least " i could do in the end ws enough and lasted. The key, I believe is to do the best at any moment possible with whole heartedness and no regret.