“When I give, I give myself.” –Walt Whitman
Quiet bouquets
Leaving West End Bakery on Friday, having eaten quite possibly the best strawberry scone ever baked in the history of the universe with real, big slices of sweet strawberry tucked throughout it and I want another one right now, I noticed an old man sitting quietly on the edge of the stairs in the parking lot with a small piece of newspaper spread at his feet in a perfect square.
A sunny day tempered with a brisk breeze and shadows from buildings were the cause for his small, tight overcoat with each of its big round plastic tan buttons neatly buttoned high and his corduroy hat, a bucket shaped one with a 1-inch brown grosgrain ribbon quite round it.
He had hands like big steaks, stuck far out from his sleeves like that photo I have of my father as a teenager too big for his Sunday go-to-meetin’ coat and too poor for a new one, hands hanging vulnerably, awkwardly below cloth.
As people exited, he didn’t bark out the price of his simple flower bunches, six of them in all, a shock of color against the black and white of the newsprint, those tiny bursts of blue, red, pink and white, balanced with yellow on two sides. Instead, he was quiet, not turning his head as he heard the door open with its brassy bell. Knowing that people were leaving after their chocolate croissants and café au laits as big as soup bowls, it seemed as if he wasn’t affected by the knowledge of their exodus, but he was, since this was his one chance before they drove away with their loaves of artisan bread: potato dill, French batards, cinnamon raisin spelt.
But rather than address us and risk that untenable glance when someone looks away quickly to avoid saying “no” and to shun the eyes of the street man, he only looked straight forward and slightly down, as if he were well rehearsed in sitting for long periods of time without diversion, no book, no buddy to engage in conversation, an altogether quiet man, as if the perimeter of the modest space he occupied was a church and he himself deliberate and silent, “like a priest with something on his mind,” said my husband, John.
It was the simplicity of the offering that attracted me.
It reminded me of being in Istanbul for the first time, marveling at the woman who squatted atop an old piece of newspaper while looking up at me shyly like a doe near the bridge linking Europe and Asia, motioning for me to consider the one ancient piece of light blue Tupperware she had to sell, that 1.5 quart bowl with a pouring lip in which I mixed chocolate chip pancake batter just this morning. I long wondered what she did after selling me that one bowl, its presence so integral to her perch there, holding down that square of newsprint. A friend with a penchant for cynicism suggested that she no doubt hopped aboard her new Vespa and made haste to restock at the tractor trailer near the Haghia Sofia full of knock-off kitchenware. I prefer my romantic version of her story as I pour in chocolate chips on Sunday mornings.
We walked to our car after buying that simple $4 post-scone bouquet, its stems wrapped immaculately in old newspaper folded into an impossibly neat rectangle before being rolled around the flowers, tied with the smallest amount of thin string possible to reach around the bundle, the kind you nip quickly with tiny scissors. Its charm was considerable.
Walking past the flower seller, I noticed a very old car parked quite close to ours. As I reached for my door, I was shocked by the sudden recognition of a person in the back of the old car—a very old woman, at first glance his mother, but undoubtedly his wife, sleeping upright, a kerchief around her hair like a bread maker or meat cutter in Moscow and a faded coat over the front of her up to her neck, her body enveloped completely underneath, like a shroud for the dead. As I looked back at the flower seller, I realized that he was older than I had thought at first, “with a dignity that had smoothed out his face,” explained John.
How much could he possibly make to feed his sleeping wife, selling those six bundles of flowers? I suddenly wanted to run back and buy them all, gather them every one and pay him double for them, an impulse of generosity but, if I’m honest, also of pity. I knew that the act of doing so would invalidate his offering and endanger his quiet dignity. Who among us wants pity? I realized in that moment that the overly generous gift somehow becomes an act of power, not love, and that a gift from a place of superiority is not a true gift, no.
Suddenly he appeared at my window, silently offering me the green plastic bottle he had cut in half to hold the flowers on display. He motioned for us to take it so our flowers would stay fresh on the drive home. “Water for drive home,” he offered in a beautiful Eastern European accent of some kind, the first words that had transpired. The bottle he offered would be one piece of plastic among many in my home, lost in the abundance, most likely already in the recycling bin. But the gingerly way it was offered, I got the sense that it was a true offering for him, that each plastic bottle was a find, a jewel, a life-giver from someone else’s trash.
There have been others who have reached out their arms to me with beautiful, simple offerings. Sometimes I have averted my eyes, denying their participation in humanity in that fearful moment of willful disregard. Sometimes I have demeaned them with my pity and overly generous bribe (here’s my gift as the better of us two, now go and don’t ask again); and in other more humane times I have simply looked into their eyes as one human being meeting another and have accepted with a smile, with an offering of my own, with an honest exchange of goods, and with the understanding that we are but two human beings slowly circumnavigating this life, some with tattered too-short sleeves and some in Armani, all with differing circumstances, but all simply—at the core—human.
Rose Man
When I was pregnant with Emma thirteen years ago, there were only three foods that would satisfy me: 1) the baked potatoes and Caesar salad bar at a long-since condemned Long John Silver’s on Route 1, a 45-minute drive one-way from our apartment (John was far beyond thrilled when that puzzling and irrational obsession faded—“I can make you a baked potato and salad at home,” he would suggest quietly as we gassed up the car for the trek); 2) Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream (which only disappointed me once when there wasn’t enough Chunky in it, a state of affairs I let B&J know about in a letter describing my hormonal cravings, swollen ankles, and addiction–and to which I received a wildly hysterical response from Jerry and coupons to ease my pain); and 3) the most urgent of my cravings which were reserved for Ethiopian food.
For several of our more than 20 years in Washington, D.C., we lived in Adams Morgan, a bohemian section of town and multicultural magnet known for its ethnic restaurants and home to the second largest Salvadoran population in the U.S. At this important time of gastronomical and hormonal cravings, we lived there near several Ethiopian restaurants. My long-suffering husband took me to the Meskerem Restaurant nearly every night for months to sit at basket tables called messobs and eat the vegetarian sampler with its dollops of pureed chick peas, mashed lentils, potato salad with green chilies and soothing chopped greens scooped up into injera, the thick fermented pancakes that double as handheld pockets for the food.
“Baby food,” declared my friends Rosemary and Gay whose only foray into the world of my obsession had taken place long before as John and I had shared our first date with them at Meskerem. They weren’t impressed with the food, but the sight of me and John dancing around each other during the meal was evidently quite entertaining. Unbeknownst to us, wagers were being taken that very night about our future life together, it seemed so clear to those around us that this was It.
Every night as I settled in for my chick pea delights, a dark haired man with a sad body language came into the Meskerem restaurant to offer the men roses to purchase for their girlfriend, their wife, their female dining companion. “A rose for the lady,” he always said, plaintively. He shuffled from one table to the next, offering his rose, his shoulders slumped, holding his arms out straight in front of him. Very few roses were ever bought. It was as though he wasn’t there, so many people ignored him. Or if you did say “no,” he would stand and look at you as if he couldn’t quite believe that those two letters had escaped your lips, as if his last hope was dashed, as if large tears might begin to fall silently down his quiet, dark cheek.
The roses were those overly dark colored ones that perhaps had gotten too cold, thrust out so quietly and with a gaze that lasted just a few seconds too long, making the men uncomfortable. Would it be corny to buy one or cheap not to? The men squirmed, silently hating Rose Man for putting them in this predicament, and often saved by the lady in question. “No, no,” she would often say to Rose Man, demurely, apologetically, ever saving the man when, in fact, she desperately wanted not the rose, but the idea of the rose, the offer of the rose, the name of the rose, with awful apologies to Umberto Eco.
One winter night in February as we walked back to our apartment from eating at…let’s see, I believe it was Meskerem…we saw Rose Man out of his milieu, on the street. Like people in Hollywood shocked to a standstill to see Brad and Angelina just walking along like normal people (keep up—Jennifer is history), we slowed to watch him walk by himself to a cab—his cab—opening the trunk to reveal by streetlight where he kept his roses. I don’t know why it struck me so—he was out of his place, that small universe of the restaurant, out in a big external cold world and it just broke my heart to learn that he drove a cab all day and walked from restaurant to restaurant all night with his roses. It seemed such a hard life, such long days of constant disregard. I could see that the trunk was full of roses as he slowly and gently laid the unsold ones back in on top. There were so very many of them left.
He just seemed the saddest man in the world.
“Your roses are beautiful,” I heard John say in the silence. “May we buy a dozen?”
Finally, lemonade stands
Last summer, Emma decided to sell lemonade to raise money for Hope for Horses, a nonprofit organization that rescues and rehabilitates abused horses. She and her dad built a magnificent bright yellow lemonade stand on wheels, a top notch dispenser of freshly squeezed lemonade that she and I made vats of every weekend (yes, it would have been cheaper to just write a check to Hope for Horses, but there are the lessons learned…). She was adamant that she wouldn’t charge more than 50 cents a glass so that everyone could afford it, and was devastated by the large numbers of people who walked by, not meeting her gaze, stiffly marching past as if she and this large lemon did not exist. Was her then-11-year-old self threatening? No, like the old flower seller, she was quiet, shy, respectful—and hurt by the disregard.
We all have memories of other human beings who move through the universe with very simple contributions and very simple requests. Can we accept them on their own terms as our equals? John’s is a memory of the very large man on the corner of Yuma Street and Wisconsin Avenue: huge and old, a mightily shiny man with an incredibly rich bass voice singing “balloons, balloons, make the womens happy, make the childrens happy, balloons, balloons,” John remembered.
Why not buy a balloon? Why not lock eyes and joyfully celebrate the street musician here in Asheville who is so good that if you closed your eyes you’d swear you were listening to Ry Cooder? Why not give an elderly immigrant four dollars for flowers that will make us smile when we see them on the kitchen table? Why not stop at every lemonade stand? Why are we so fearful? There is a simplicity to the exchange that helps us meet others, on the street, not as “better than,” but as “same as.” To meet them in the spirit of equal exchange allows us to lift up their contributions in the world—and our own.
~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~
John used to exhibit at the Washington Antiquarian Book Fair, where dealers would deal their happy deals and buyers would search for that rare find, that first edition, that singular addition to their collection. When Emma was eight, she went with me to the opening reception to say hi to her Dad. In addition to the bookshelves in John’s booth, he had a lighted display case for the more rare and expensive items: Newton’s Optiks, Darwin’s Origin of Species, and Stieglitz’s photograph of New York’s Central Yard. As she peered into the case, Emma looked troubled. “What’s wrong, Buddy?” he asked from behind the counter.
“What will the poor people be able to buy?” she asked.
She went home that evening and drew small and elegant pictures of horses that she priced twenty-five cents in the wavering penciled handwriting of a third grader, insisting that John include them in his showcase. Hers was a special thoughtfulness, a lifting up, a recognition of the varying levels of financial recourse in the world, a caring for—it was, in the truest sense of the world, an offering.
There are people around us who are trying to make a small way in the world. Theirs seems a quiet chorus of simple exchange: not the argumentative marketing of an angry man, but the quiet desperation of a hungry one or the simple offering from one who has perhaps determined a more humane set of priorities for himself than those of us in business suits. Don’t avert your eyes, but rather, take their offerings in the spirit of respect. In the process, you may find yourself redefining what poor is. Be human first. Stop at every lemonade stand.
Every night as I settled in for my chick pea delights, a dark haired man with a sad body language came into the Meskerem restaurant to offer the men roses to purchase for their girlfriend, their wife, their female dining companion. “A rose for the lady,” he always said, plaintively. He shuffled from one table to the next, offering his rose, his shoulders slumped, holding his arms out straight in front of him. Very few roses were ever bought. It was as though he wasn’t there, so many people ignored him. Or if you did say “no,” he would stand and look at you as if he couldn’t quite believe that those two letters had escaped your lips, as if his last hope was dashed, as if large tears might begin to fall silently down his quiet, dark cheek.
