A Holiday Proposal

[A new story, Some Elder Women of the Blogosphere, has been posted this morning at Blogher.org.]

One morning about ten years ago, while working in midtown Manhattan, I took a different route to my office from the subway. Along the way, I passed a woman sitting on the sidewalk leaning against a building. She was begging.

I didn’t give her any money as I walked by but unlike other beggars I regularly ran across, she haunted my thoughts all day. She was extraordinarily thin, even gaunt. I noticed that her wrist was about half the width of my own, like a child’s.

Her eyes were as sad as they were enormous. She was, if you can tell with someone who has been on hard times for a long while, in her forties, wearing a black, plastic trash bag with nothing on her feet but dirty socks. She seemed to me, as hundreds of people rushed by, to be terribly alone.

After work, I altered my route again to walk past her. I had a $20 bill in my coat pocket, but she was gone, her place on the sidewalk empty.

The next morning, I woke thinking of this woman. At the time, I had been working again for about two months after having been unemployed for a year and in my worst days when I was without a job, I wondered if I would lose my apartment and have nowhere to live. It is a chilling thought.

My personal finances were tight as I applied every extra cent to pay off as quickly as possible the debt that had accumulated during my unemployment, but I had my home, plenty of food and, for awhile anyway, a job. It was a life the beggar woman could only dream of.

And so, on the way to the subway that morning, I hit the ATM machine for $400. It spits itself out in twenties and having no envelope, I wrapped the money in a half page torn from The New York Times.

As I walked my new route to work again, I spied the woman from a block away sitting in the same place, still wearing her trash bag and socks. Handing her the newsprint package, I said the only thing I could think of: “I hope this helps” and walked on.

In her position, $400 wouldn’t go far, but I hoped, as I approached the spot the next day, that she would at least be more warmly dressed. She wasn’t there and I never saw her again.

I don’t have the wherewithal to do that often, but after my encounter with the woman, I often stuck a ten dollar bill in my pocket when I left the house and gave it to the first beggar I saw that day. It’s not much, but ten dollars will buy a decent meal and if someone buys instead a bottle of whiskey or drugs – an argument some have made for not giving to panhandlers - that is not my business.

It had been years since I’d thought about the beggar women when I read this story in The New York Times. It begins:

“He was known as Secret Santa, a mysterious white-haired man wearing a red shirt and cap, who would hand a stranger in need a wad of cash and make a speedy getaway. During the holiday season, he would appear in cities across the country to dispense his largesse.

“Secret Santa started his mission in December 1979...”

Go read the rest of this story and if you are inspired, perhaps there is someone you can help out anonymously this holiday season - and during the entire year. As one commenter at The Times story notes, “…there is goodness that lurks in all of us.”