This year's recipient for my
Untied Way donation was a dark-skinned man in a wheelchair. Poor, black, and disabled... that's a tough row to hoe. I feel for him.
I started doing it two or three years ago, when I got off 80 at the Central offramp and impulsively handed a $20 to the guy on the curb. He was a scruffy white guy in his late 20s who looked like he'd been homeless for a while; I'll never forget the look on his face when he stepped back again and actually looked at the bill I handed him. If you've ever been really poor, you know that expression -- he had just discovered that he could afford to eat that day, or to get off the street for a night, and his relief was so profound it was hard to keep his knees from folding. He had expected a buck or two, and suddenly had the grinding stress lifted off his shoulders, even if just for a moment. I drove away and never saw him again.
But the next year I did it again, for a different guy. I always seem to end up getting off at Central near the end of December, for one thing or another, and there's always somebody there. Last year I think it was a woman, beaten down and looking older than her years. This year all I could give was $10, but I hope it made a difference anyway. I had to roll past and slap it into his glove like a relay runner because the light was green, but he caught it, and maybe even caught my "Happy Christmas" to go along with it.
Most of the money I've spent on Christmas this year was for charity, and I'm okay with that. It's not much... $10 for this, $25 to be doubled by the health-food store and used for the food bank, but I've never lost sight that however tight things are for me, they're tighter for somebody else. I won't erode my own footing for them, but I do what I can. Like Jon Carroll suggests, I give just a teensy bit more than I feel like I can afford... usually it's just one donation, though I hope someday to be able to manage a few more. It's something, anyway, even if it's just a little birthday candle in the dark.
Happy holidays.