Break stride
"We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are." -Anais Nin
Coming home from Chicago two weeks ago, I was struck irretrievably ill in the cab on the way to the airport, that kind of I’ve- eaten- an- alien- food- poisoning- I’m- unable- to- stop- shaking nauseous kind of ill, the sort where you focus all your attention on staying upright, in which not vomiting becomes the only measure of success you can muster. An immediate, swift, and unstoppable sick that–like a train in a tunnel–just keeps barreling toward the light of day.
As I challenged myself to stay focused and not demonstrate any outward manifestation of Sick, she was joined by her cousins, Shaky and Clammy. Once deposited on the sidewalk near baggage check, I was accosted by Dizzy, now harboring the Trifecta of Sick as I struggled to maintain control of my luggage and carry-on bag, navigating escalators where people were moving too fast, making everything blurry, my vision struggling to keep up with my body.
What should I do? Could I actually travel like this? Should I even take the flight? If not, where would I go and how would I change my ticket—all questions that were too big and too distracting from my primary concern which was Not Fainting.
Adding to the Sick, I was overcome with Vulnerability. If I fainted, what would happen to me? Would people assume I had been snorting back a few too many chasers in the Mile High Airport Lounge and, thus, deserved this disgraceful way of being in the public eye? Would they step over me, cursing me for being in their way? Would I lose my Humanity and be, instead, simply an Inconvenience (or worse)? Most importantly, would they steal my shawl and my shoes?
A few years ago, I read an article in either the NY Times or The New Yorker by a woman telling her story of being mugged in Manhattan. Inexplicably, after taking her handbag and jewelry, the thief demanded her shoes. Having lost her Palm Pilot, cell phone, cash and cards was bad enough—but shoelessness was the utter height of vulnerability, standing penniless on a street corner in Manhattan with no shoes.
I wish I could find that article again. It resonated with me in that way you feel when someone says something you’d never thought to articulate, but all of a sudden when you hear it, you recognize it and own it—do you know what I mean?
Jostled and poked by people impatiently whizzing by, he was tall and the thinnest man I had ever seen. When I lived in Sri Lanka, the brother in the family with whom I lived was 6’6” tall and wore size 28 Levi’s – a real rarity there, that height and skinniness. This man was that tall, but far thinner. His face and neck were full of scabs; all the veins in his arms were bulging as if they were being squeezed out from under the skin. He was hard to look at, but his eyes were beautifully full of realism, knowing, hope, determination — something that I cannot name.
You look like you could use a hand, I said quietly as I stood beside him. Can I help? At first he said no, we were going in two different directions, and then he fell into me, accepting the offer, his first. Together we navigated the escalator, me carrying his bag and him holding on to my arm and leaning on me. We didn’t say much—it was hard for him to talk, but I finally got him to Gate 8000—or at least it seemed like it was Gate 8000. I was in the presence of death that day; it didn’t appear that this human being would be with us much longer. And before he went, I wanted him to at least know some small amount of love and caring among a busy, fast-paced world, some looking-after that expected nothing in return.
I started my exile in the Delta Crown Room until it got too crowded for this Claustrophobic’s liking. Brookstone was next—I never knew I needed so many battery operated gadgets with timers! So many pellet pillows!
Next was Buckeyes and Bluegrass with their tempting Swedish Fish candy (to which I succumbed since they were all red fish, not those sad multi-colored packs that bastardize the taste, losing a porcelain cap on one of my teeth in the process–that’s when you know you’re aging). Then The Body Shop, followed by Hudson News—yes, there was a new People magazine—so I reclined at the so-called food court to relax for, oh, eight to ten hours. After reading about Brad adopting Angelina’s babies while eating a difficult piece of Sbarro pizza (me, not him), I sat and watched people walk, making note of the different walking styles I saw—some anxious and fast with small steps, others languid and smooth with long strides. Some necks ahead of bodies, some behind. Some sure, some tentative. Some moving side to side as much as forward.
And as I watched people walk, I saw an elderly gentleman start falling in the middle of the atrium, in seeming slow motion. He tripped, tripped, tripped, seemed about to catch himself each time, then down, down, down he went, hitting hard on the surface beneath him, his 1968 light blue pleather carry-on cosmetic bag tumbling away from him, his arms outstretched to catch it (like my buddy Chuck Knoblach used to do from the New York Yankees’ second base until he forgot how to throw to first.)
As I got up to run toward him, I realized that the people right around him who had seen this hawkish, slow pirouette went right on by—quickly stepping around the road kill. And the man himself had lived in this society long enough to know that his real anguish wasn’t whether his hip was broken, but whether or not someone would steal his dead wife’s toiletry bag from him, the one thing that reminded him of her, that still smelled of her Jean Naté body powder, the one with that big poofy poof that she dabbed all over herself in the mornings, leaving tell-tale white residue on the carpet near the vanity that he used to get angry about and now missed, terribly.
As I knelt beside him, having retrieved the bag to reassure him, I remembered my own bags, still stationary at the so-called food court. For a moment, I’ll admit I was torn between materialism and humanity, but humanity won and I stayed where I was until help came.
He was in his early thirties, dressed for work in a yellow oxford shirt, grey jacket and slacks, his blond hair still wet with that freshly combed look even though he was writhing face down on a city street. He was semi conscious and vomiting blood. His backpack, still on his back, heaved up and down as he tried in vain to press himself off the pavement.
I dialed 911 and the dispatcher asked me to hold as he connected me to emergency. Either because I had stopped or because I’d opened my phone, the passing commuters, without exception (there were five in rapid succession) spoke: “Are you taking care of this?” “Are you dialing 911?” and my personal favorite, “You got this one?” Apparently, there were scores of people collapsed and bleeding on the streets of Seattle this morning. They spoke but never broke stride."
We need to break stride, my friends. We need to break stride.
Break stride. Don’t anticipate that others will help—they’re watching for your reaction, too, and imagining that others will help, an infinite regress of not stopping, not helping, not seeing. Imagine, if you will, that you are in that person’s shoes, dizzy and sick in the airport, alone.
