Funny thing about waiting for a ‘red’ light. Held hostage, you have but two choices; observe the world around you or hold your phone to your face and check your social media feeds.
Normally, I watch people when waiting for a ‘red’ and this beautiful spring morning was no different. Next to me is a heavily painted platinum-haired woman in an old red 70s era Cougar convertible strumming her steering wheel to ABBA. They’re an old Swedish pop group about to make a comeback. The driver can relate. For a brief moment, I join her in the past and tap my steering wheel and hum ‘Momma! Momma! Momma Mia!’
Eventually, I return to the present to watch those waiting for the ‘walk’ sign to illuminate. On this particular morning, someone on a bicycle is leaned up against the cross-walk button tapping it vigorously as if anxiety-ridden or suffering the effects of one too many energy brews. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Kitty-corner to the convertible and the impatient bicyclists, an individual brandishing a tree limb is in a heated, angry discussion with a light post- or, perhaps, he was preaching. The light post stood stoic while this disheveled young man held his pants up with one hand and waved his stick with the other, yelling at but never listening to the post. A young tattooed woman, wearing a well-used pandemic mask, fearfully keeps a safe distance from the animated, cartoonish strung-out street preacher. Not appreciating this comedic scene, she simply hopes to make it to the other side fully protected in the event Covid the Hump IV decides to hitch a ride on the back of a semi that just rumbled by. Poor thing… life comes with so many dangers.
I tap my fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for the ‘green.’ The gentleman on the bicycle at the crosswalk button is tapping nearly in unison. He looks vaguely familiar. I then realize that this crosswalk drama and its variations are for me to ignore- or, perhaps, enjoy. Tomorrow, on my way to work, will be a set of different actors doing mostly the same things.
Still ‘red.’ I suppose I could have grabbed my phone and looked for some new text that wasn’t there 12 seconds ago and ponder as to why not. Instead, I gave into my next favorite way to while away the time- I began to imagine the lives of all these fellow travelers navigating the street crossing. What can one surmise from this street drama I’m observing? What stereotypes can I broadly paint that makes sense of any of this?
I study the bicyclist again. Tall, pale gray, unshaven, underdressed for the morning cold, and skinny to the point of looking malnourished. It’s possible his bicycle is his most valuable possession. His eyes roam the street nervously, hypnotically. Back and forth and then back to the crosswalk sign for any sign his continuous tapping of the button has yielded to his will.
He looks like a cousin I haven’t seen in decades. The cousin who shared his deepest aspirations with me in brotherly fashion. He was to be a playwright in Hollywood and I was, by some magic, a philanthropist without giving any thought as to the source of my charity. A penniless philanthropist. He at least had a partially completed manuscript- some wild Klingon conspiracy with lots of horror and violence. He let me read it. Maybe that’s why I remember him today- we were both dreamers.
I remember well his mother- a wonderful aunt. When just a boy, mother was sent home to die. My cousin was farmed out to relatives for months. Finally, the end came near. Maybe a week, maybe a month, but have no doubt, the doctors said having done their all. She was going to die. She didn’t.
Must have been a confusing time for a young boy. For weeks, my cousin watched the world go in and out of the house in tears struggling with how to say goodbye to his mother made incoherent by her own body’s toxins. My grandfather, a burley stoic wanting privacy, went to his bedroom and sobbed- pleading for a miracle. His sobs were heard in the living room and beyond. She lived to be near 80.
He’s looking at me looking at him. I glance away to see the light still ‘red.’ I look back. He appears to think he knows me and gives me a wave without a smile. Maybe it is my cousin. I hope not. His dreams must have fizzled.
Actually, I know they have. The family grapevine tells a different story. One that includes weed and alcohol and isolation and mental psychosis. Beyond that, I don’t know what happened to this very bright, creative, well-raised soul.
I try to imagine the hurt that turned him to abandon his dream and seek escape instead. Or did he just choose to remain numb in some endorphin orgy that a drug-altered state provides? Or did he fall victim to the lie that long-term weed use was benign and will cause no harm and he still intends on being a famous playwright? I wish that one. I have so many questions and in just the few moments I’ve considered him, a gnawing sense of responsibility. Are we still brothers? Is it possible that he is homeless?
Just as I was about to motion to him my desire to talk to him, the two cars behind me start tapping their horn. Honk. Honk. The car in front of me has already gone thru the ‘green.’ My cousin too is disappearing across the street. But maybe he isn’t my cousin. Naw… I proceed on my merry way.
A Father Changes the Ending. He Finds His Homeless Son
In one small community, over 60 homeless souls died on the street in 2021. A tragic ending to so many dreams. The city council offered a resolution in memory. The news report can be read here.
For Steve Ellis from Illinois, knowing that his 45-year-old son was homeless was a burden he could no longer bear. Having lost touch with Jason for years, Steve went looking for him. He found him at a shelter in Tacoma. It was a wonderful reunion. You may read the news account here.
Reunions can be wonderful events- but not always. A couple of years ago, I wrote a novel titled ‘Reunion.’ It is my first. I have been gratified by reader reviews.
Homelessness runs deep through ‘Reunion.’ As a human condition, homelessness is the never changing ‘red’ light of our social dysfunction. It is the result of too much hurt often numbed by too much of the wrong medication. Many have self-medicated into various stages of psychosis seriously complicating the ability to cope and accept help. With bridges burned to nearly every relationship, they are alone and on the street.
If interested in reading ‘Reunion,’ it is available in both paperback or Kindle at Amazon.
Old Growth Fir
I never met John Miller. I do know he met the age criteria to take residence in a senior living facility, still plays a mean game of tennis, and his synopsis’ still hit on all cylinders. By happenstance, I was given this poem he wrote as a young man. I hope he is still writing poetry.
A lone meadow, diamond white
fired by the morning bright
Was set ablaze among the fir
Settled as silkin light
The artist
Brushed the final stroke
Framed the work in frozen blue.
And I,
In awe,
Laid the blow
That tumbled heaven to the earth
By stepping in the snow.
by John Miller
