The following is a short piece I wrote after observing a homeless woman walk down the streets of Rome at night:
Traffic lights go from green to red and vise versa. The mopeds speed by and the buses come and go, letting off passengers only to collect new ones. People talk on their iPhones without the care of attention to others around them. The sound of suitcases on wheels bump down the uneven stone covered crosswalks in front of Roma Termini, Rome’s Central Station.
Across the street, beyond the tramlines and bus stop, a woman, dressed in a long black skirt and a hooded down jacket walks parallel to the station. Behind her drags a box, her home, and refuge from the night and the rain. She is elderly. Her hair is white and shoulder length. It sticks out from the front of her hood. She is some ones daughter. She may be a mother or even a grandmother. Poverty is real.
Clenched in her right fist is a plastic bag full of the only possessions she has in this world. She crosses the street and walks along the wall of the stations entrance, the cardboard kitchen appliance box is still firmly held. The entrance wall consists of eight tall and wide glass panels. The barrier between her and the rest of society is transparent.
She lays the box down first. The bag is positioned as if it is a pillow. In the three blocks that she has waked, she has not stopped once to beg for a handout. She has no sign asking for a helping hand, there is no baby slung from her shoulder, and she is not performing an act to get applause or encouragement. Her focus is a place to sleep – a warm one preferably. Luckily it is the 5th of May.
She sits upright with her back against the glass window. I have not seen her face yet, but I know what the lines will tell me. I reach into my pocket, grab all the change and look at it in the palm of my hand. I count four euro or so. I walk up behind where she sits upright, tap on her shoulder, and hand her the change in my hand. She tries to refuse the handout, but all I do is smile. Her face is dirty, with fragments of sand and small clumps of dirt stuck between the wrinkles on her face. I look at her closely; she looks like my grandmother who died almost three years ago. We exchange smiles this time.
I spent the night observing.
I wrote this piece as I walked and observed this unnamed woman. When I left her, I couldn’t stop thinking about her face and smile. The lines and folds of her face told an important story. I will never know this story. Maybe her story was about misfortune, death, alcoholism, drug abuse, a layoff, or heartache. It is possible it was a combination of everything mentioned.
What I know for certain is this: at some point in her life, she laughed, loved, danced, smiled, cheered, hugged, sang, learned and most importantly, she lived.
Regardless of whatever circumstance put her in this place, she should not go to bed hungry, without a smile, or without the feeling that human compassion exists and that a helping hand is there.
I stood in the train station for ten minutes as the rain started in slowly and moved in fast and hard. I looked at her from the transparent barrier created by the wall of windows. I just could not stop thinking, “what if this was my nana?” I would not want my own grandmother to go to bed hungry or without a warm feeling in her heart.
At the lower level of the station there was a grocery store. I went and got her strawberries, bread, and water. Strange combination, I know, but I chose strawberries because I wondered the last time she had eaten them. Did she remembered the flavor when the juice reached the taste buds or what it felt like to have the small coarse grainy seeds pass through her teeth.
On my way out, I passed a McDonalds. I am morally against the company and the practices they have, but I felt that she would want a cheeseburger as well, or two. The total came to two euro. I handed the cashier a twenty-euro note. I stuffed the change into my pocket. When I brought the food out to her, she refused to take it. No Senoré. She spoke no English. I took her hand and left the food. She put the strawberries under her blanket, to save them for later. As I walked away, I could hear the bag from McDonalds opening.
In this twenty-minute period, I never once thought about money. It did not matter. I just did what I knew felt right. When I walked towards the metro, I pulled out the change from McDonalds to place it in my wallet. I counted twenty-three euro. The cashier had miscounted, and gave me an extra five-euro, the exact amount I spent on the purchase of this woman’s meal. There was a reason I decided to buy her dinner tonight.
I made a difference in this woman’s night, and in her life. I know she’ll remember that someone showed her decency and compassion when she had nothing. She needed the food more than I needed the money. I am not foolish to think that I can change the entire world, but I know I can make a difference. I walked all of Rome and saw the Colosseum, Pantheon, Roman Forum and everything in between, and this moment, was most significant. The bottom line is that there are too many people in this world and the money and resource is not available to help everyone. But helping just one makes an impact, and if everyone threw out a hand here in there, maybe the world could be a better place. But who know, I sure don’t.
