#everylinematters

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With business casual attire, they came in suits--one elephant and one monkey. The band played and they watched, awestruck.

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Life in color.

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As the back window of the metro opened--like a movie screen--he watched. White Father and Asian Mother held up Brother and Sister.

The small boy was taped to the back window. His face watched the scene as train tracks transformed, like Superman, from a dark diamond gray to orange and pink. The train-track lines were like perfectly sweetened lemonade at 6 pm.

Striped long underwear covered the young boy's sugar-cane legs.

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D,B, E, A; False, False, True.

Grading papers, a gray goatee and his wife; fifteen minutes till the next downtown-bound train. Two kids played hexagon hopscotch, making sure to avoid the cracks.  D, B, E, A; False, False, True.

Father continues.

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I got this.

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Happy Tuesday ya'll

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I got off at Takoma, nearly home and still smiling.

  Thirty minutes earlier, nearly crying. My chest felt like suitcases had been thrown at it. My lungs were mixing concrete, and I tried to take deep breaths without the success of actually doing it.  Earlier that day, I received an email. I was angry and defensive and hurt. I wanted to cry, but adults don’t do that.

  I left the office and took deep breaths—real ones. The trees and cement came together, and I neared the escalators, hearing that boom. They--a trombone, two trumpets, and a percussionist--sounded like a wall ornate with gold writing and rubies and drawings. Current songs, jazzy.

  I stopped. My heart started bobbing its head and dancing—badly, I might add, because neither my body nor my soul can consistently keep time. I laughed at the tiny white child, blond hair, jumping, running in circles, dancing. Her grandmother laughed with her. I took a picture; I recorded the sound. And you can listen to it; what gave me deep joy. I recorded it for you.

  Thirty minutes later, I got off at Takoma smiling. I slid my card and said goodbye to another $3.65. I began the walk home, up a cement-hill. My eyes blinked and saw—the same way you flip through channels and notice. It was a man, in a wheelchair, moving his legs like a drunk mouse at the base of this “hill”. He was sluggish, like a VHS tape paused, in minute-increments. His dark head rose slowly, defeated to see Everest ahead. I winced. And I couldn’t help it. “Sir, you need some help? Want me to push you up?”—“I’m trying to get across the street up there.”—“Can I push you?”—“Yes, Mam.”

  Keith smelled like hard liquor; he’d had the wheelchair for two weeks. He slurred. People watched as I put my weight behind the man, and pushed. Like a husky in Antarctica.

  When deep pain meets deep joy, it rarely stops to care what people think. Because all you’re worried about, after feeling suitcases emptied, is getting someone else there.

  I helped Keith. I pushed his wheelchair across the street. To the liquor store. I didn’t pray with him. I didn’t ask if he knew Jesus. Maybe I slipped up. But I got him to point B. Even if it was a liquor store. You can’t know where everything—or everyone—goes.

  But you can do the work in front of you.

  And if you’ve known deep pain, and seen it defeated in simple ways—perhaps a jazz band outside the metro—by deep joy, you don’t think about the end point. Not always. Because if Keith would’ve died on the way to the liquor store, or I had gotten hit by a car as I pushed him there, he would’ve known one thing; not that I was enabling him to drink more, but that I was with him.

  Every noble and saving act began because someone decided to walk with you. Whether it was Jesus or your grandmother, or your brother, or your teacher. The addict didn’t get clean by being ignored. The child didn’t get saved by a distracted social worker.

  People save people. That’s the truest form of God in each of us.

  So even if I didn’t “save” Keith, I met him; I looked him in the eye; and I pushed that damn wheelchair up the hill, and across the street, and I shook his hand.

  When deep joy meets deep pain, it doesn’t care—it acts.

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“Conscious Parent” was the book that lay in his tree-bark hands; his veins were like ivy along the Great Wall.

Smooth skipping rocks, stacked on top of one another (like a cairn), shown on the glossy cover.

Was he a “conscious parent”?

The air around was gentle; his smooth eyes like calm, skipping rocks. His athletic shoes were orange, his jeans blue, and his coat gray.

“Capital South, doors open on the…” a voice scratched.

If he gets off next, I’ll do it. My stop. I was a few minutes late, but. Aren’t we all? Important things are always just out of reach. “Eastern Market,” the speaker scratched. He rose.

What happened next? Take 47 [.9] seconds to see.

This is a metro story.