She Wears Two Signs

A lady stood with her back toward the top of the escalator as I left my train stop. She had a sign hanging from her shoulders that read, "Crippled - please help." As the escalator rose, I saw that the backs of her legs were exposed, despite the freezing temperatures, and that there were gaping wounds in the belly of both of her calves. I gulped.

Readers, I agonize over the words in these posts, and I hope you will not think I exaggerate when I say this was repulsive, and she bared it to the world in the heart of winter.

"Gaping wounds," I repeated to myself as I walked home. 

Snow Day

As the snow piles up, so do the snow days. People are frustrated that they can't work, can't get around. And they're cold and wet.

But I can't help but think back on the first one, January 12th, 2011, when we went outside to shovel our cars out and found neighbors dancing in the driveway. Literally. Everywhere was gorgeous white and people of all ages were bundled up like the little kid in A Christmas Story. I exchanged smiles and happy snow day greetings with each person I saw - no exceptions. I know that my worldview has a starry-eyed optimist sway, but readers, you couldn't deny the relief on those faces. People need a break from routine, and sometimes the only thing that will grant it is mama earth.

"Everything doesn't get better just because it's a snow day, you know," laughed Morgan.
"Yes, it does," I said. "Look around."

A quote on this subject:
"As Luther puts it, our sinful state is like a dunghill: ugly and offensive, having nothing in itself that would commend it to anyone, let alone God. Justification is like the first snowfall of winter that covers everything, including the dunghill, in a blanket of pure white. The smell is gone. The repulsive sight is gone. The dunghill is still intrinsically a dunghill, but now it’s covered." - Summation found on this blog.

Slow it Down, Now

Due to the massive amounts of snow that have fallen on the greater Boston area, sidewalk sizes have shrunk to a fraction of their former width. Unfortunately for me, this means there is no passing allowed. No matter how late I'm running. So when I find myself behind a blind man with a cane or an old lady with short steps (both of these happened this week), I get a much needed slap on the wrist.

Either that, or I decide to walk on the street.

Sculpture

The snow in New England is heavy and wet. It doesn't cave in or flake off under weight. It's snowman snow. Walking home Monday night, I saw the word "Exactly" scrolled into the snow bank to my right in perfect, undisturbed cursive. The snow rounded the edges of the word, making it even more lovely. A little ahead, I saw the words "I am?" in a different print. After a driveway followed the rest of the conversation, which was a lot like something I might write have written to my sister if my mom had told us to be quiet in church. It was a celebration of the very possibility of a written exchange, not any sort of actual discussion. Further up the hill lie signatures and drawings, will-you-marry-me's and fuck-you's. Four parallel lines where someone had distractedly dragged his gloved fingertips as he walked. Three days of snow graffiti preserved for anyone to see. But walking home on a noiseless night, I felt like it was all for me.

Count on It

Part of my job is keeping the cash drawer stocked with small bills, which makes for a quick-trip to the bank every couple of days. The man who inevitably appears behind any window I choose is excruciatingly slow. He wears gold cuff links, and his shirts are impeccably pressed. His face looks young, but he is so serious and strangely clean that I would guess he's at least thirty. Usually I hand him a stack of twenties and ask for a certain number of ones, fives, and tens. He takes the bills from me in separate stacks and then walks over to the drawer. He works methodically and carefully, always following some version of this pattern:

Count bills, straighten stack, straighten tie, count bills, type on computer, straighten sleeves, straighten stack.

Then he walks over to a counting machine, puts the bills in, and removes them, only to repeat the whole thing. It's all very straight. Everyone else at the bank counts the money once while trying to convince me to open a new account. I prefer the cuff links guy.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

A little girl was lying over two seats when I got on the T today. Her father lifted her up to make room for a huge crowd of people that had just boarded.

"Where is that music coming from?" she asked him.

"Someone's headphones," he answered. "The train doesn't have it's own soundtrack."

"Yes it does," I thought. Just ask Pauline. (Start with 3:15-5:25.)

Little Kid and a Motor Scooter

Seeing a child alone on the street is pretty uncommon in Boston's Back Bay. It causes an it-takes-a-village-sleuth-response in me, and I have to stop and search a moment, wondering where the attendant might be. During the snow last week, I saw a little kid standing next to a parked Vespa, no chaperone in sight. He was all bundled up. It looked like he must be waiting for somebody - the owner of the scooter? He brushed the snow away as it landed, making sure to keep the shiny, yellow panels clear.

Twenty minutes later, when I made my way back to the place where he stood, the boy was helping a man shovel, but the scooter was gone.

Keeping up with the Joneses

During the snow this weekend, one of the stores across the street sent a man outside to shovel the huge sidewalk in front of it. The ground he covered made a perfect outline of the width of his store, and he did not color outside the lines. When he was finished, he went back out to sprinkle salt all over it. Ten minutes later, a man from the next store appeared and scraped away his snow. The next time I looked out, I saw a guy emerge from the store on the other side of the first, all bundled up and extremely reluctant, busted red shovel in hand.

The fascinating part of all this is that there was less than one inch of snow on the ground.

Help for the Homeless

There was a guy standing outside Au Bon Pain soliciting customers on their way in.

"Do you have a moment to help the homeless?"

He caught the person right before me, so I was off the hook. I watched him while I sat in the front window of the shop. He stood in a ski jacket under the falling snow, with hat and mittens and clipboard. After a while, he was approached by a rugged man in a cotton army jacket, with a sand-colored bag spilling out over his shoulder. He was unkempt and under-dressed. I watched their confrontational body language at first, but eventually I could hear their conversation through the thick glass wall.

"So you have some money for me, then?" Asked the self-declared homeless man.

"That's not how it works," answered the canvasser.

The homeless man proceeded to ask him exactly how it worked, how a homeless man was to get this "help." But I don't know what he was answered.

I had watched the man pocket cash from all sorts of people, the way a beggar would with a paper cup - but in this case, it had to go through envelopes and bank accounts and many other hands. And he couldn't lose it to an unapproved homeless man. Especially not in its rawest, most delicate form.

Pristine Privacy

A friend from school was on the opposite train platform from me today. She wore a newsboy cap down over her eyes and held her head low as she waited. I willed her to look over and greet me from across the tracks, but instead she hid under her gray bill, and I could hardly confirm that it was her. When the train came, I converged our paths by walking to the next car. I planned to tell her how I'd tried to catch her eye for ten minutes. But she looked so completely anonymous and solitary; she was content in her own thoughts. So I left her alone on the crowded train.