I saw him walk up with his bike and lean it against the
wall. I wondered what he was doing,
hoping his bike wouldn’t get stolen while he went into the grocery store. I was on my way out of the grocery store
parking lot.
Then I saw him lift the lid on the trash can. Then I saw the small plastic grocery bag in
his hand, already full of aluminum cans.
Immediately, my heart moved with compassion. I thought to myself, “Here I go home, with my
8-dollar salad, and this man is collecting a day’s worth of cans to scrap
together some change.”
I made the left turn I was waiting for and headed out of the
parking lot. Then I remembered it: the
giant Hefty trash bag full of aluminum cans, sitting in my backseat, in my
peripheral vision, placed strategically so I wouldn’t forget to take them to
the recycling center tomorrow morning.
And I felt it, that familiar, still, small voice, in the
back of my head yet oh, so clear:
“Give them to him.”
How quick my brain was to make excuses! “But I have such a big bag of them, I wonder
if he could even manage it on his bicycle.”
“There’s plastic bottles mixed in with the cans; he won’t
want those.”
In about 3 seconds, I found the solution: pull into that
empty gravel parking lot, pop the trunk of my car, fish the plastic bottles
out, and leave only the cans in the bag.
In the next 2 seconds, I was doing it.
I pictured him putting his small plastic sack inside this
big, strong, heavy duty trash bag, half-filled with cans….money.
I placed the white bag up front with me, and drove back to
the grocery store parking lot, expecting to still find him at the same trash
can. He wasn’t there, so I drove in a
circle to find him. I tried to think
logically about which direction he may have gone in. I couldn’t see him, so I stopped and asked
the Knights of Columbus representative, who was standing outside the grocery
store door collecting change for his cause, if he had seen which way the man
had gone.
“Sorry, no, I didn’t.”
I jumped back in my car and continued to drive slowly the length
of the parking lot, and then I saw him through the cars! He was at the end of
the parking lot, turning north, heading to the two large dumpsters sitting
behind the back doors to a bunch of stores in the little shopping plaza.
The street and the area behind those stores were completely
empty. No cars, no people. Only open space and two dumpsters.
I pulled my car into those empty parking spaces and turned
South to walk to him. He was poking his
head into the first of the dumpsters when I got to him.
“Sir?”
He turned around.
“I want you to have these.”
“Oh, are these from that liquor store over there?” (Thinking I was an employee handing him our
throwaways, I assume)
“No, I had them in my car.”
“Oh, and you just passed me? Thank you…”
“I was just going to recycle them, but I want you to have
them.”
(Laughs, a chuckling laugh, like Santa Claus)
“Well, that’s mighty nice of you, thank you!”
It was like he’d won the lottery.
I walked back to my car, got in, and smiled to myself. I gave thanks for my open eyes, and for my
open heart. I thought how divinely
arranged it all was: the fact that my cat ran out of food just this morning,
forcing me to stop at this very grocery store on my way home from work; the
fact that I had gathered these cans at F’s house in Ellsworth this week, and
he had them all sorted and ready for me to take today; the fact that the
recycling center in Ellsworth was already closed, forcing me to bring them to
Salina to recycle; the fact that I took a brand-new trash bag from F to
bring them in, something I normally wouldn’t have done.
All for that Santa Claus laugh.
No comments:
Post a Comment