It seems cliche to say we see things differently when we have children. It’s almost pathetically trite to say we “notice the little things” or realize we must “stop and smell the roses.” Oh, parenting is chock full of cliches. I do see the world differently now that I’m a mother, for better or for worse. I sense my mortality more acutely than ever before. I am weepier. I laugh harder than I ever knew I could. I see delight in things that would have previously escaped my radar.
I also see pain in places I hadn’t looked before.
I drive the same route frequently. I drive along Peace Street en route to get my haircut, buy groceries, grab a latte, check out library books. I am always in the same rush, sometimes flustered, often chatty, usually just focused on getting from Point A to Point B without getting more grey hairs and keeping my inside voice in check. Other than checking my rear view mirror and practicing good defensive driving skills, I don’t pay attention to much else. Bird and Deal are usually poking at each other, bickering, or giggling while I sing along to John Denver or something equally appealing appalling.
It was on just such a day that Bird’s observation opened my eyes.
There was uncharacteristic traffic one morning while we were headed to the tennis courts of a nearby college. We stopped at an underpass that we literally drive by every single day. I never paid it any attention. Usually I just zipped by and focused on the road. On this morning, Bird looked up from his ever present stack of baseball cards and said, “Look, Mommy. I think someone lives there.” He said this with a mix of matter-of-factness, sadness, and incredulity. Deal craned his neck to peek from his perch on the opposite side of the car. He found this unbelievable and figured his big brother was tricking us with the old childhood “Made ya Look!” standby. They confirmed to each other that indeed someone lived there.
Under the bridge.
Homeless.
The telltale trappings of a life were bared for us to see. A knotted pair of sneakers strewn over a railing, a wad of clothes, a stash of water bottles and plastic sacks, wrappers of food, a sad pile of newspapers and cardboard, a blue knit hat, a flashlight. This cramped, dirty, noisy space beneath the bridge was home to someone. It was bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen upon the jagged rocks that separated a human from a highway. It was clear that someone had settled in with no place else to go.
How many times had I driven by and not noticed a thing? How long had someone been there, eeking out an existence on less than nothing?
“What can we do? What should we do?” my sons asked, with equal parts panic and hope.
“I don’t know.” I responded, struck by the sadness and reality and gravity of the scene.
And I drove away.
What else are my sons seeing that I’m not?
So, so true.
This reminds me of a day not so long ago, when my eyes skated over a jobless man panhandling with a sign, automatically reading and then mentally discarding the message he carried.
My boys, though, noticed his lack of proper grammar (the sign said, “Please help, don’t have no job”), and suggested we stop and tell him that perhaps if he fixed his double negative, he might get more money since people read his sign and think he really does have a job. I couldn’t explain the reasons this might not be such a good idea, and like you, I drove on. This particular guy has not been seen since at that corner, and some part of me hopes someone else did a nobler thing than I was able (wiling?) to do.
I’ve never met your boys, but I feel as if I know them. I like your writing, a lot. The things that our children, my grand child too, see that we look right past at times amaze us. It’s those times that we see them as becoming “people”. It’s a good thing that you notice these things in your boys, and take the time to write about it.