Charles Dickens walked a winter night and watched white snow turn black in the acidic rain of nineteenth-century England. He saw children as young as five filing from factories dirty, hollowed-eyed, silent,and tired from the long hours of work in dirty factories fired with greed and fraught with danger. Raw sewage from the thousands of horse drawn cabs, cattle, and hogs mixed with human waste that ran down the street into the Thames where London's masses got their water and their cholera. Dickens often walked ten to twenty miles a day through London's filth. Privileged kids sang in a school yard, “Ring around the Rosie, pocket full of poses, Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down.” The cryptic song echoed through the streets. Coal fired chimney pots belched black soot that covered London's edifices and coated London's lungs. Two classes of people passed in a cloud of pollution mistakenly called fog. They seldom acknowledged one another, but barriers break down on Christmas Eve.
Mr. Dickens faced his own set of problems. His literary career teetered on failure's ledge with attendant financial ruin. Nineteenth century Britain used debtor's prison as common means of punishing the poor; thus, even a person of Dicken's stature feared poverty. Watching a family trim a tree through a frosty window, he probably reminisced about past, simpler times. Did a father coughing up black mucus tear him back to the present? A man and a nation hung in the balance. Dickens later wrote in The Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of time, it was the worst of times. This night Dickens thought of Christmas past, present, and future. He went home and wrote a haunting tale about greed and death and the consequences of a life spent chasing wealth. Unlike the cutesy Christmas movies we watch on television this Christmas Eve, “A Christmas Carol” paints a bleak picture. In spite of the soot and sewage Dicken's finds a message of hope. People can change, and they can make a difference in the lives of others.
Today I pedaled through a bitter cold wind sucked from Hood River down the Columbia River Gorge into Portland's streets. I stopped my bicycle on a bridge overlooking Interstate 205 to warm my hands and to practice something they call “mindfulness “in psychology. As a writer I simply call in looking--really looking in the same way that Dicken's looked on his twenty mile walks through the city. He observed with all five senses. I attempted the same. The harried air carried no smells as if in too big a rush to carry odoriferous baggage. It's cold sting on my face made me feel strangely alive in it's deathly grip. A dark, gray cloud blanket muted winter's light, and drivers turned on their lights not to see but to be seen. The clock read 2:30 pm. Like a huge Christmas tree, a red string of taillights snaked through the gigantic fir boughs covering hillsides adjoining I 205.
Standing over that highway I thought of Dickens and the world he faced. I thought of my world. A few days ago a young man plotted to blow up thousands of Christmas revelers in Portland Pioneer square at the annual tree lighting event. America fights on the fronts of two wars this night. Iran and Korean could make for two more. Setting a new high for Christmas, gas prices surpassed the three dollar mark. Over-population, pollution, world-wide economic collapse, and threat of pandemics threatens our very existence. Rather than seek solutions, nations fight. Wikileaks exposed them. The Wikileaks founder finds himself in jail.
As in the days of Dicken's Our Christmas Carol has a bleak side. It also has a bright side found in people driven by the cold winds of Christmas that in some way makes one feel strangely alive even in the presence of death and disaster. One finds hope in the random acts of kindness (RAK) performed on city streets without fanfare, at little expense, with no expectation of profit or payback. My Dicken's experience highlights RAK's of five women on a cold day in Portland, Oregon.
Let me start some years ago on a summer day actually to introduce my first woman. Why? Well, she sets the stage for the other four, and she deserves honorable mention in my tale. Please reader, indulge this one anachronism.
Two Angels
I've met two angels in my life—one white and one black. Both came to me during difficult circumstances. Both came to me early in the morning. Some years ago a white lady walked over to me in a forest park in Sandy, Oregon. Only she I inhabited that park that morning. She handed me a tract which simple read, “Publish the Name of the Lord.” I have never seen a tract like it before nor have I seen one since.
“God, told me to give this to you.” As quickly as she arrived, she left. Pondering in years gone by I would even say, “She disappeared.” I felt as if I entertained an angel unawares as the Bible puts it. I glanced at the tract. I had just lost a secure job with Multnomah County in Portland, Oregon. I had a dream to write full-time but had a family to support. I had a decision to make to seek another JOB or follow my dream. She came to me in the midst of this turmoil with that message. I chose writing. Her simple act to obey a higher inner voice had a profound impact on my life.
The other four ladies I met in the Christmas season 2011 in the course of two days. A young, black lady stood on a street corner paralleling the street where I waited on my bicycle for the light to change. Normally a busy street Martin Luther King Blvd this morning could have hosted a church service. We glanced, but before I could appropriate avert my gaze, a smile exploded across the twisted, tortured muscles of her palsied face.
“Merry Christmas.” She spoke with a tenderness that nearly made me cry and makes me cry now. I wanted to kiss that twitching face, but I dared not desecrate the moment or the beauty of my black angel.
“You got your shopping done?” She asked.
“I'm all alone.” I replied.
Most would pity or patronize me. She only said, “God, bless you.” As the light changed, a peace fell over me, and I felt rather than heard a message from my angelic friend that said, “Everything will be okay.” This time I disappeared; however, I think had I looked back I would have seen an empty street corner.
Three Women
Old
Permanently hunched over, she looked up at her world as if looking from under a baseball cap pulled down too far on the her head. However, instead of a baseball cap she bore a gold BMX helmet. She had obviously fallen before and wore the helmet to protect the last valuable asset left her. This little lady walked at her own peril,l but she walked, and she displayed a courage and dignity greater than any helmet bearing athlete I had ever seen. I whispered, “Merry Christmas, sweetheart, as I passed.”
Middle Aged Mom
She had cute face but carried a bit too much junk in the trunk as the kids say. Loud, brassy, and showy she liked drawing attention to herself. She got my attention. I watched her and her two little girls at the checkout. One of the girls had sneaked a pair of pink slippers into the shopping basket. Mom loudly but patiently explained to the little sneak that she had three identical slippers at home. She stopped short of yelling, berating, or slapping her daughter. For once in my life I picked the fast line. I loaded my bicycle trailer as the trio pasted me outside.
“Thank you for taking another car off the street.. Merry Christmas!” She spoke to me before I came to understand that she had directed her comments at my wide backside.
“Well, thank you.” A motorist has never thanked me for riding a bicycle in the years I have ridden Portland's rainy routes.
I head her exclaim as she flew out of sight, “See, girls, that's what we call THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT.” She referred to herself. Showy, brassy, but classy,she had her faults, but she had the right stuff for momhood. Through her faults she taught by example both the value and ease of saying something nice to another. It cost her little, taught her children something, and meant much to me.
Young Oriental
I followed a crowd toward the crosswalk on Powell Boulevard which would take me back to the other side of I 205. She kept looking back at me. Many guys stand my height and many of us unknowingly intimidate small women. I slowed to give her space. She slowed. Everyone left us standing alone on yet another street corner. She looked up into my face.
“Which way to one--two--two street?” She asked in broken English.
I have a horrible sense of direction, but I knew that I 205 runs in the low to mid nineties. “Let's see. We're on ninety-second.”
“Which way to one two two?” She repeated patiently as if to say, “I don't need your rambling. I would like an answer you dumb American.”
“It's that way. She turned and walked over to the bus stop.”
I followed. “Let me check the schedule.” The number nine bus only went to ninety-eighth. It would take her another a six blocks before turning in a way perpendicular to her course. How does one explain that through a language barrier. I tried. I failed.
She smiled at me. “You're so nice.”
I didn't feel so nice. I feared for her, and tried to once again explain.
“Is one-two-two that way?” She asked yet a third time.
“Well, this bus will take you in the right direction.”
She smiled again. She had left for an adventure and had found it and felt satisfied just to travel in the right direction. She seemed nonplussed by the fact that her ride would only last six blocks. I walked away still fretting for her.
Returning to the crosswalk, I looked back to see if she got on the bus okay. She stopped before boarding. She looked over at me, smiled, and gave me a shy little wave. I had made her day, and she mine.
Undoubtedly my little tale has little of the magic afforded Dicken's Christmas Carol, and will probably fail to set me on literature's stage. However, like Dicken's I can say that I stopped and looked. I saw a world in trouble with a coal-dust kind of misery that has clung and continues to clog and cling to man's walk through history. I also saw that glimmer of goodness that reveals itself at this time of year that allows people of different classes, race, and sex to talk to one another and pass on a simple Merry Christmas. Portland, family, and friends I wish you just the same.
