Old Man Winter

The first day of winter lived up to its name and blew in gusty, wet and chilly. The air around the river was chillier still, and forced me to seek refuge behind a wall instead of my normal post at the side rail where I can watch the propellers churn the Mississippi into chocolate milk with a white froth topping.

Two other cyclists kept me company as we huddled behind the stairwell. I was the only one with a rain jacket on, and I pulled the strings by my neck to tighten the hood around me. It only drew the hood further into my face, blocking my vision and tangling my hair, so eventually I gave up and conceded victory to the winter. The man beside me was in shirt sleeves. He was old and gnarled, one shoulder tilted at an unnatural angle high above the other. His beard was grey, which made him look tired. He saw me fiddling with my jacket and laughed, "You look like a Christmas elf with that red jacket." I turned toward him when he spoke and smelled liquor, not from his breath, per say, but emanating from him, like he'd taken a bath a couple of days before in a smoky, sickly sweet concoction. We proceeded to chat about Christmas and he insisted that the song had it backwards, and that only the naughty people seemed to get what they wanted. People who tried to be nice, like he was nice, never found themselves with the good things. He was a good-natured fellow in spite of the fact that he never got what he wanted on account of being so nice and all, but as he laughed and carried on, I noticed that his smile never got to his eyes.

Have you seen these people?

In her book, Down By the River, Edna O'Brien writes,

"There is really no such thing as youth, there is only luck, and the enormity of something which can happen, whence a person, any person, is brought deeper and more profoundly into sorrow, and once they have gone there, they can't come back, they have to live in it, live in that dark, and find some glimmer in it."

Once you know where to look, you can spot them pretty easily. Their eyes are drawn together just a bit at the outside corners, like they are squinting ever so slightly to improve their focus. There must be a million ways sorrow comes to the human race, and each story is a private etching that lives on so many of the faces we pass every day. We try to ignore it as best we can, but once you understand where to look, you see them every place you go.

For some, the stories of their lives take them to unexpected places. Places where people find themselves talking to an elf in a red jacket, drunk as a skunk though it's just past noon. Or on the side of a highway, holding a sign that declares you are hungry and need change for food. And maybe you do. Who am I to judge that you would use it to buy mad dog instead? And so, when the line of cars won't let me in to their lane, when the drivers coming out of the mall drive past and speed up just a little, pretending not to see me so they don't have to let me in and risk missing the light;  when, after an eternity, someone finally lets me in, but not before I feel anger and frustration rising in me over something as silly as this,  when I see you standing there by the road and roll down my window to give you three ones, it's not actually to ease just your own sorrow, but to help me remember that there is more to life than my own.