Car Trouble
Driving down Bryant Street in the south of Market area of San Francisco, I slow down when I see a woman holding up a sign. I have four dollars cash in my wallet, and when I open the window I see a woman who is clear-eyed and receptive. We exchange a few meaningful words in a chaotic moment on a busy street. Author Carolyn Baker observes: “When we see a homeless person, we are essentially viewing a societal corpse who may be walking around alive and animated, but who represents death and loss—the death of dreams; the death of livelihood; the loss of home, family, place, and a sense of belonging” (163).[1]
If we could download the lives of others into our psyche—their histories, the number of times they might have been manipulated, abused, neglected, or betrayed (by individuals, by social systems that leave so many behind)—we would not judge them. Likewise, if we could see our own lives and histories with more clarity, we might temper the inner critic that perches, sharp-tonged and judgmental, on our own shoulders, especially when we are feeling most vulnerable.
Vulnerability visits us all, in many different ways, during the course of our lives. Recently, visiting a friend in northern California, I’m vacuuming our car at a local car wash. The pressure of the vacuum cleaner causes the car to lock from the inside, and in an instant I am separated from my keys, purse, wallet and phone. My nerves fray, and I go from feeling carefree to vulnerable and thinking about the unhoused persons in the city, who live in a near-constant state of desperation, treated as pariahs. Propelled by anxiety, I awaken the “connect to strangers” part of myself. When I discover that the humans present are willing to help a rattled soul, I exhale.
A friendly, flamboyant Canadian woman and her son inform me that triple A can solve my problem in minutes. “You’re all set,” they say, as they smile and move on with their road trip. Another young woman observes my feeling of desperation and hands me her phone to call triple A. I can tell that she’s nervous, has many other pressures, and I’m grateful for her generosity, born of knowing what it means to be scared. I understand that she’s got places to be, so I hand back her phone, thank her effusively, and move on.
The next woman is washing her car, and she happily hands me her phone, so I make the call to triple A as I watch her peacefully stroke her car with a soapy sponge. I’m grateful for her kind words and relaxed, generous energy.
Driving with my teenage daughter toward a little town in Arizona called Tupac, not far from the border of Mexico, is another such time. The sun begins to set, and I’m desperate to reach the safety of this atmospheric little town that I’ve been hearing about from friends. The engine begins to rattle, and my daughter wisely takes the first exit. A few seconds after we exit the lonely highway, the car stalls. The life of my beloved Subaru Outback is over (I don’t know it yet), and the engine is smoking.
Within seconds, a man drives up beside us and jumps out of the car, his pre-teen daughter watching the situation unfold from the open window. He pops the hood and provides an assessment. I had seen this man take a deep breath before he jumped out. I had seen his irritation with a stranded woman in a Subaru with California plates Yet he stops his vehicle, despite obvious feelings of resistance. He and his daughter, who has a moment of truly seeing her father as a hero, help to push our car to a safe spot. I thank them in my expressive way and acknowledge to myself what it means for humans to be there for one another. This man turned what might have been a traumatic evening into a graced experience, wherein I felt myself on the receiving end of spontaneous goodwill.
Nobody wants car trouble, or to feel dependent upon others. I must have needed both. I never did get to the little town I so wanted to visit, and I still haven’t replaced my beloved car, but I did experience grace infused moments. Now I know what it means to be seen, to get help and to accept it, when desperate.
Almost every time I walk the streets south of Market, I make it a point to try not to avoid eye contact with the most vulnerable among us. Although many are lost to themselves and to others, the number of times I’ve had clear-eyed interactions with unhoused people, who might just be angels, is extraordinary.
On one sunny day, I see a man sitting outside the sandwich shop on Ninth and Bryant that I frequent. After picking up my order, I hand this man a water, and for a second we truly see one another. A flicker of a moment can tell a very long story, and I still think about him.
On another day, a young man with a southern accent asks me if I have a “dollah.” His eyes remind me of a good friend’s son, and they convey a familiar sweetness. He just might be one of “my own,” and I wonder how he might have lost everything. Childhood trauma, lost connections; it could happen to anybody, and it happens all of the time.
To look deeply into the eyes of a stranger—to acknowledge them, to see them, to know that they might very well help you, if you were in need—is to take one step at a time toward our fellow human beings, crossing the bridges that divide us.
The other day an elderly woman in my neighborhood, whom I’d seen from a distance but never met, called to me from across the street and asked me to help her carry a package into her apartment that had been left on the wrong doorstep. We chatted, and she took down my information. Now she has my number to call if she requires help with anything.
She called out to me from across the street.
We might try calling out to one another; we might try crossing the bridge—walking, crawling, pushing, or carrying one another—toward one another. We might need, at some point, to call out to a stranger when we need something badly enough.
We can cross the chasms that divide us, chasms that are not real but fictional divisions, illusions.
As we make our way across the bridge, perhaps we shed the lies that tell us that we have to be anything other than our truest, most vulnerable selves.
We find each other on that bridge; we find each other along the way. Maybe, even for a fleeting moment, our eyes will meet.
[1] Carolyn Baker, Dark Gold: The Human Shadow and the Global Crisis, Universe, 2017.