A Faulty GPS or Celestial Guidance
A Three Minute Read
I really dislike driving through large cities. That one word is such a compromise from the blast of words I’d like to vent.
The part of this driving that I most detest is yielding much of my control and the odds of my passenger’s survival to an enormously wide array of humanity. It’s not that I’m particularly risk averse. But there’s such a huge difference between me taking a risk with a substantial benefit in mind and someone else electing to blow the paint off my front bumper, while I’m doing 75, so he can get home for a Packers game.
Two Sundays ago I was taking Belle, my eight-year-old granddaughter, home after a wonderful visit with my wife and me here in very rural Wisconsin. We had entered Milwaukee and she, in the back seat, was probably two thirds through the book she was reading. It was obviously engaging as she updated me in bursts regarding the on-going saga. The afternoon sun was fading, and a steady rain pelted the windshield.
I had a rough idea of where I was going as I headed toward the northeast side of the city. I’d been to her dad’s house a couple times before, but each time via a different route. Somehow, I had lost the Blue Tooth connection with my phone and was forced to rely on Google Map’s visual display for confirmation.
Over the course of the sixty-mile trip and several turns, we were still on course and only three miles away from exiting the interstate - when the shit hit the fan. Out of nowhere, the traitorous phone which I held above the steering wheel, commanded that I take the next exit (300 yards), and I darted to the right thinking it knew something that I didn’t. I was very mistaken.
As the rain picked up, I found myself going west instead of east, weaving through multiple lanes of traffic distorted by construction. My sweet Belle kept giving me story updates as the drama unfolded. At one point I asked her to please hold off on the story for just a minute . . . “See those three highways above us, I think we should be on one of them.” Obviously, I had a lesson to learn regarding my misplaced priorities because she insisted, “I’m almost done.”
With white knuckles I forced my way over to the first exit that wasn’t headed toward another random interstate. After surviving ten minutes in purgatory, I found myself waiting at a red light. We both noticed a sixtyish-year-old man standing there in the median strip ahead. His only protection from the rain on this fifty-degree day was a worn-out sweatshirt. He held an illegible cardboard sign. As I was thrashing through the center console, the light turned green. I just managed to hand him a five along with a feeble suggestion - “try to keep the faith.”
And we were on our way.
“Belle,” overflowing with innocence asked, “Why was he there?”
I said something like - he doesn’t have a house like we do and he’s hoping people will give him money so he can buy something to eat. And then the kicker - “But what will he do tonight?” The best I could come up with was “hopefully he’ll find a piece of dry cardboard somewhere and maybe a bridge to sleep under.”
I never heard the end of Belle’s story nor was there another word mentioned about the older man’s plight. The quiet emanating from the back seat was painful. I imagine that she will be marred by this childhood experience. I can only hope that she will grow from the experience, meld the gifts she’s been given with action, and resist the temptation to let the memory fade in the rearview mirror.
Do any of my readers find it interesting or ironic that a malfunctioning GPS could lead to such an emotionally laden experience for my granddaughter? Any room for Divine Mystery here?
Painful to think about, let alone read quietly in my warm house on a cold wet day in mid November.
My hope is that your grand daughter will remember that you handed cash to someone. You GAVE WHAT YOU COULD to a Stranger in much worse circumstances than your own. Giving and not expecting anything in return is a rare action in the Best of Times.
Please Continue Giving What You Can.
Thank you so much. I’m a social worker in a very wealthy state. We don’t have enough housing partly because wealthy people have purchased extra houses and other’s mobile home parks, to feather their wealthy-already nests.
Those folks should pay extra taxes on their wealth so that govt s in small communities can create safe housing for homeless folks, build networks for unhoused teens and others of all ages, to have warm, clean safe places to rest overnight. Every night. Until state funded education can be attended to lhelp unhoused folks get skills necessary to move into their own lives ! Without standing in the cold rain hoping someone will hand them enough cash to get a bowl of warm soup for ten minutes indoors …
Our beautiful country is truly lopsided with the HAVES & the Don’t ever get a hand up. We in the middle are struggling to avoid sliding into the homeless
Just one of many painful lessons this sweet girl will learn that will leave her speechless. Some facts are so foreign, so incomprehensible to children -- what can they say? Even as adults we face the unfathomable, don't we? It is sometimes hard to accept, but it is part of the human condition. A very moving tale, Mark. Thank you.