But For The Grace Of God

Two times she had approached me on the street. She was dressed in a garish costume that made her look like she was celebrating the 4th of July, pushing a cart with two cats, and holding a sign that read, “Could you please help my two cats and I with some change.” Two times I had avoided looking at her (as I had been told to do with street people) as she avoided looking directly at me. She just mumbled in a monotone, smiling, as she glanced around and approached the passersby.

My friends in San Francisco advised that I should simply shake my head and look away when street people approach. “You can’t help them all,” they said. “And, most of them are drug addicts or alcoholics. If you give them money, they will just get high.” Each time the cat lady held out her hand at me, I took the advice of my friends and shook my head.

As the cat lady walked on up toward Chinatown, I sat down at the table outside of a cafe in front of the Chinatown Gate. I ordered a large ham and cheese sandwich on a baguette, and had the server cut it in half, planning to eat that later on the plane. Contentedly, I munched my half-sandwich, watching the parade of people on the street. As I gathered my trash, and wiped the crumbs to the street for the begging pigeons (“airborne rats,” as my husband calls them) which strutted at my feet, I glanced up.

Like a boomerang, the cat lady was back. The third time is the charm. This time, our eyes met. She was not drunk, she was not stoned … she simply lived in an alternate reality. Perhaps she was about my age … perhaps a decade older … it’s hard to tell, because life on the streets takes its toll. She held her hand toward me. Unbidden, my hand holding the remainder of my sandwich lifted toward her, and my mouth said, “Are you hungry?” She snatched the sandwich from my hand and ripped into it, mumbling her thanks.

She kept muttering as she munched the sandwich, and my feet would not walk away, so I listened as she told me her story:

Three years ago my husband, God rest his soul, died — The Colon Cancer got him, and it was awful. He was only 63 and the pain he felt … oh, the pain in his gut, poor man. I’d never had a job. I didn’t know what to do. They came to me and wanted to put me in a home. They’re Nazis that’s what they are! Do you know what they do to you in those places? They were gonna make me take meds — and I’m not sick. I’m not! They make you get up when they say it’s time, and eat when they want you to eat! You have to go to bed when they say so. And, they wouldn’t let me take my cats! I got this one on the day my husband died; found her on the street and took her with me. How am I supposed to leave my babies?

Bless her heart, her fall from Grace had only taken a death in the family.

She rambled on, and then noticed my camera. She begged me to take a picture. “People always take pictures and tell me they will send me one, but they never do. Will you? No, you won’t … but I’m going to give you my address.”

She posed, she wrote down her address, and all the while I reluctantly took pictures. As she talked to me, people in cars hung out of their windows … snapping pictures of her … the crazy cat lady.

She pressed her address into my hand, and I took her hand for a moment and shook it. I fished a few dollars out of my purse for her. She smiled, and then distractedly bent to pet her cats before she walked down the street mumbling and reaching toward other strangers.

As she walked away my mind heard the words,

This morning, I’m cropping and printing her pictures to send them to her in San Francisco. She lives in a hotel for indigents. It’s the least I can do for her in exchange for opening my eyes and melting my heart. The bumper sticker on her cat stroller said it best, “One Human Family.”

Other posts you might enjoy:

1. Like The Pied Piper
2. That’s Not Enough
3. Grace In Small Things Is Good
4. Sweet Summer Treats
5. Dona Nobis Pacem

Tagged as: Give From The Heart