Every street corner is more or less the same. They are the crossroads between where we are going and where we have been. The paths of others are layered across it. They are decorated in flowers, rocks and fifty shades of concrete. There may be a light, a newspaper, or a marker-smudged sign with human hands pressed tightly upon it.
The signs are a barrier between those that hold them and those that fiddle with the radio in an attempt to avoid eye contact. It is hard to read every word, every time. It is hard to look into the face of need when we all need something. Our own lens is often blurry.
The sign is a humble invitation to human contact between those who lack it and those who take it for granted. It is an opportunity for small moments of sympathy and respect, civility and kindness. A lot can happen at a red light.
We sat in the car with the windows down. It was a beautiful, blue-skied day and the breeze from the hills felt vaguely of the sea as it danced loosely across the salt of our thinly layered sweat. There it lingered soft and cool, only for a moment, then it carried on to woo the next in line, leaving nothing and taking parts of us with it. A blink. A breath. A whisper.
We were leaving a store. Our bags were full and my wallet was empty. I had nothing in my pocket save a collection of plastic cards that owed more than I have and a balance that was anything but.
The breeze danced in my window, spun me around, tickled the nose of one boy, then the other, and flew out toward the man that stood there waiting. He smiled beneath a skin taut with sun and a layer of sweat much heavier than my own. His glance fell down, past the cardboard sign in his hands, to the grass beneath his feet and the child that sat quietly upon it. The breeze rolled from father to son and the smile went with it.
“Why is that boy sitting there?” asked my youngest son from his spot in the backseat. His window was down, too, and his words were loud and carried on the wind.
The man kept his gaze to the ground and the boy looked at something important in the opposite direction. We were at a stop sign and there were no cars behind us. Everyone was waiting for something.
My reaction in such situations—when a child’s innocence tends to leap from one side of a socially awkward bridge to the other—is generally alarm and quick words of quiet panic, something that surely embarrasses us both, but this time I took the man’s invitation.
To be clear, this isn’t meant to suggest that I am remotely noble, doing the right thing, or any sort of action that merits acknowledgement beyond those involved in the moment, but rather a reminder of how much we all share, and that we shouldn’t need signs to confound our attentions.
I could be that man. Any of us could. As it is, there was a time not too long ago that we barely got by at all—I went from making a decent living to making nothing, and then we found ourselves having serious talks about what we feared to be inevitable: a gym membership for showers and a car to sleep in. We didn’t have many options, and we started to prepare for the worst. It scared the hell out of us. We were fortunate. That isn’t the case for everyone.
The man on the street corner, the man that could have been me, was equal parts proud and uncomfortable as he leaned in the window that I am lucky to have, and replied:
“No, of course not. Change is very much appreciated.”
It was all I had and I gave him all of it.
“Why did you give that man money?” asked my oldest son from his spot in the backseat.
“Because he’s a daddy,” replied his brother.
The man’s eyes met mine, and one of us nodded and then the other. There was nothing left to say.
As we pulled away I watched the rearview mirror and a fading street corner looking more or less like any other: a slab of concrete, a slice of shade, and a small, smiling boy held in the hands of a man where a sign used to be.
A version of this piece was first published at Honea Express, reprinted here for #WorldKindnessDay. “Give Way” photo by Will H McMahan on Unsplash, “Seeking Human Kindness” photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash.
