My Angel Wore Tennis Shoes

The oddest thing happened yesterday morning as I left my office building to go out for a smoke (just shush) at break time.  I’m still sweetly charmed and spiritually lifted up by the memory . . .

Our office complex contains several businesses on various floors and suites – a retina consulting agency, a Social Security Hearing office, Disability Adjudication, various internet and information technology organizations, etc.  A wide variety of people walk through those double glass doors and like in most public venues, we all pass each other with that familiar distant gaze at an imaginary target Somewhere Beyond or at most, a polite nod accompanied by the smallest smile our face can manufacture.  Urban body language that states firmly, “Strangers we are and strangers we shall ever be.”

But yesterday morning, as I walked through the first set of glass doors, I noticed a frail elderly man adjust his stride to match that of his equally elderly wife – mid 90s, if they were a day – as she shuffled slowly across the curved driveway at the  entrance to the building.  She hunched over a three-wheeled walker, and although I couldn’t tell whether she was purposely bent or had no choice in the matter, it was obvious that each measured step was dreadfully painful. Her mouth  was a thin determined line.

The temperature outside was already approaching one hundred degrees but she wore a knobbly gray sweater over a simple cotton print housedress.  Her feet were encased in plain, lace-up sneakers, like Keds.  I suppose she doesn’t need Nikes – her running days are long gone.

“I’m crossing your palm with silver,” she said.  “You keep this always in your pocket and every time you take it out, you thank the Lord that you are able to walk. You will do this? Do this!”

As she reached the edge of the curb and prepared to step up onto the sidewalk, she hesitated for some time as though girding up strength, the effort of just getting that far etched on her face.  Her husband hovered like a hen over a lone chick, but he didn’t try to assist her in any way; just offered a shaky arm in case it was needed.

I stood outside the door, ready to hit the automatic handicapped entrance panel.

“Sir?  Ma’am? There’s a place just a little further down the sidewalk where the curb has been cut down for wheelchairs and things.  Might be easier?”

I pointed to an area about twenty feet away from where they were standing and then mentally smacked myself in the forehead - hard.  It had probably taken them ten minutes or more to get from the parking lot to the curb at the entrance to the building and I had just suggested they walk an extra forty feet.  Brilliant. They didn’t bother answering – just shook their heads.

Memo to public building owners:  Put the danged handicapped curb right smack in front of the entrance, OK?  They aren’t all being pushed in wheelchairs by burly young men, for crying out loud.

“Is there any way I can help you?”  I asked.  I didn’t want the old gal to fall and break one of those fragile hips or something worse.

The mister shook his head again but his wife spoke right up with no shilly-shallying around.  “No you can’t,” she said, “As long as I can still do it, I’m going to do it myself and they all have to let me.  Even if they don’t like it,” she added.

I have no idea who ‘they’ are but I’ll bet they have their hands full.

Heading out to the parking lot to my car, I patted her shoulder on my way past.  Then I realized her husband was no longer standing beside her.  I looked back toward the door and I swear to you, he was there and then he just . . . wasn’t.  He must have gone inside when I blinked but, seriously, this man was one of the oldest living human beings I’ve ever been around.  I wouldn't think scooting was an option for him.  However, I didn’t have time to think about it because the Missus was saying, “Wait . . . Wait!”

I thought she was calling to her truant husband but I was wrong.  She was calling to me and because I’m slow on the uptake, she got irritated.

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” she repeated, louder this time. I turned back.  Her head was twisted to the side as far as it would go and she glared at me as I retraced my steps.

“What?  Do you need help?”  I asked.  And then I noticed that she had somehow climbed the curb and was standing on the sidewalk.  When had that happened?  She was still hunched over her walker and hanging onto it like it was her day job, which it probably was.

She fumbled in the pocket of her dress and I thought, “Ohmigosh, she’s going to try to tip me!” but instead, she grabbed my hand with both of hers and hung on with a tenacious strength that surprised me.  She pulled me down until our faces were inches apart.  I could see every whisker peeking between the folds on her upper lip and I suppose she could see mine, because the pale blue eyes peering at me through myriad creases of flesh were as sharp as polished gems.

“I’m crossing your palm with silver,” she said.  “You keep this always in your pocket and every time you take it out, you thank the Lord that you are able to walk. You will do this? Do this!”

Her hands were large and crabbed and engulfed mine.  Odd hands for a woman whose head didn’t reach my shoulder and I’m only five foot three, but she surely was much taller at one time.

She withdrew her hands from mine, leaving a coin in the center of my palm. I put my other hand on her knobbly sweatered back, thanked her, and said, “God bless you, ma’am’,” then shoved the coin into the pocket of my capris without looking at it or really thinking about what it was.  It didn’t matter.  She was a sweet, slightly batty old lady.  No harm, no foul.

But as I walked out to my car, for no reason I started to cry. I cried all the way across the parking lot and continued to cry through the smoke of the cigarette I lit with shaking fingers.  I cried with a release I didn’t know I needed.  A cleansing rain. 

Tossing the half-smoked cigarette out the window, I pulled the coin from my pocket – it’s just an ordinary John F. Kennedy half dollar dated 1971, gleaming as though newly minted.  Nineteen seventy one has no meaning for me but maybe it did for her.  And maybe she passed a story to me that I can’t fully grasp because I didn’t pay close enough attention to what actually occurred.

I will keep it. And I will thank God every time I pull it from one pocket and drop it into another.

That old woman had no idea how hard it is for me to walk sometimes or how sorry I feel for myself sometimes when the arthritis hurts so bad that nothing seems to help.  But at least I can still walk.

She could barely shuffle in her own agony yet for some reason she paused to share this with me, to bless me, to touch the heart of a complete stranger.  At what cost to herself?  I will never know because I doubt I will ever meet her again this side of heaven.  The hair raises on my arms as I write this.  I feel like I’ve been touched by the very Spirit.

Or maybe just an ancient angel in tennis shoes . . .