Dec 25, 2008 00:32
For most of you, I can't afford to get you a nice gift this year, and this is the best I could do. It is a true story, and I hope you all enjoy it. Have a wonderful Christmas.
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The Laundromat and the Homeless
A few weeks ago I was shopping with my mother at the corner of Whites and Soledad, wondering what to do with myself. It was during that odd off time in the middle of the buying season when I had little to no money, and I was all but tapped out, barely two dimes to scrape together, my pay period delayed a few weeks, pretty much in the red, do not pass go, do not collect $200. It made holiday shopping that much more frustrating, and I was beginning to get a bit “Grinch-ish”. I had come to despise the gaudy signs on the windows advertising last minute deals and the retail chains screaming bankruptcy because people weren’t spending like drunken sailors. I was even more depressed by the fact that I, the girl who loves holidays, enjoys spending her disposable income getting that delicious “Aaaah!” on Christmas Morning, found myself unable to deliver. No special gifts, no expensive gifts, no perfect gifts, barely even thoughtful gifts as I found myself consistently compromising and cutting corners. My Christmas was getting increasingly bleaker as the California sun shone high and bright on a cold day.
My mother ran into the market to quickly pick up her prescriptions while I waited in the running station wagon, protecting the gifts within from various imaginary brigands and bored teenagers. I listened to crappy band after crappy band until I got sick of the radio and clicked it off. I plugged myself into my i-pod and listened to the Postal Service on repeat, guaranteeing that I would be listening to something meaningful without having to listen to it at all.
As I was checking the clock on the dash for the fourth time, I noted out of the corner of my eye a sun-baked man carrying what looked like a roll of bedding and six months of grime. His face was shaved enough beneath his dirty brown hair, but his hair had obviously been left to its own devices for a long time. His dark brown skin didn’t show quite so many of the leathery wrinkles of a man who had been in the wind and sun for many years, but showed enough to illustrate how down on his luck he was. With his rolled-bedding slung over his shoulder, he walked in with an awkward jaunt, eyes alight with something, and I couldn’t figure out what.
The Laundromat stood on a disintegrating corner of the building, the only part of the complex that had not been fully rejuvenated in the recent building restoration. The same sun-yellowed sign sagged over the building as the gritty floors stood yellow against their brighter white days. An older woman quickly finished up her duties as the vagrant walked in and scurried away with her laundry in tow.
The man walked in and blinked at the machine, tentatively lifting the door and peering in. He then unrolled his bed-roll and began pulling items out. Shirts, hats, socks, sweats, all care-worn and well loved, were shoveled quickly into the top-fed compartment. In the excitement he pushed on the top, and bent down, struggling with his shoes and socks, eagerly putting them in the machine. He then moved on to his shirt and hat, placing them on top of the pile. He felt nervously at his pants, looked around, thought better of it, and closed the lid.
He opened an adjoining machine and shoved the bedding inside, collecting a few stray items off the table and shoving them in his pants pockets. Pulling a handful of bills from his remaining clothing, he looked at them, wondering how to get them to do what he wanted. He walked over to the change machine, and nimbly fed them in, fighting with one bill as change poured out from another. He then moved over to the next machine, and with vacant surprise watched as a box of detergent clanked in the aluminum tray at the bottom. He turned the box over in his hands, feeling every orange and blue angle and curve.
I continued to watch him as he examined the machines, reading with his finger how to use the detergent, awkwardly loading it in each machine, and saving enough to use in the nearby sink to wash most of his body, the strains of “Such Great Heights” filtering through my ear-buds. Christmas had come to this man in the simplest of ways. Unlike the stereotypes we take for granted, he wasn’t using it to buy booze or drugs, but to buy a bit of dignity. It was five dollars worth of simple decency and a clean place to sleep at night under the unforgiving desert stars. He never peered out the window. Never noted my presence, just as no one else noted his, and quietly carried on as he washed his hair a few remaining specs of laundry detergent in a change fed sink.
My Mom pushed noisily in the car with bags, prattling on about how poor the service was and how she simply had to change pharmacies but was too damn loyal to do so. I reluctantly pulled the ear-buds out and turned to look at her, acknowledging where necessary and watching the road as she pulled diagonally from her parking spot and carelessly into the road. I looked at the lit screen of my i-pod, turned it off, and watched cars full of bags and toys whiz by.
My God, thank you.
My God, bless him.