I was sitting at one of those interminable stoplights, when you get off the interstate and have to wait for three light changes of two minutes each just to make a left turn.<\/p>\n
It was blazing hot and I had a swig of water. Then I saw her.<\/p>\n
A woman with a ragged short haircut, wearing dirty and disheveled clothes. She was carrying a sign scrawled on a scrap piece from a box.<\/p>\n
I could guess\u00a0what it said before I could actually make out the words: “HOMELESS VET – PLEASE HELP”<\/p>\n
She walked slowly between the dense lanes of cars waiting\u00a0at the light.\u00a0She didn’t stop at every car – only the ones who opened their window. Few did.<\/p>\n
Although she was very thin, it seemed that she’d once been in good shape. The outline of well-defined muscles remained.<\/p>\n
When she got to me, I rolled down my window. “I’m sorry –\u00a0I don’t carry cash,” I said to her. \u00a0“Thank you,” she said.<\/p>\n
I often get this response from homeless folks – they seem to appreciate even the acknowledgment, someone who will look them in the eyes and speak to them, look at them as a human being instead of a bag of trash.<\/p>\n
Her eyes were not quite calibrated. Her face had a couple of cuts on it. Her timid smile was lopsided. I thought of Tom, who’s a veteran, and his temporarily lopsided smile being fixed by therapists in rehab, all costs covered by his excellent health insurance.<\/p>\n
“But do you want some food?” I asked her.<\/p>\n
Her eyes lit up. “Oh yes!” she said.<\/p>\n
I reached over on the seat, fumbling for anything I had. My hand fell on the gift basket of fruit from Tom’s co-workers that I was bringing to him. I ripped the cellophane off and grabbed an apple.<\/p>\n
“An apple?” I asked, holding it up.<\/p>\n
Her face fell. “Sorry, I can’t eat it,” she said, pointing to the gap where her front teeth were missing.<\/p>\n
“Oh God, of course,” I said. I dug around on the seat and came upon my insulated food bag. All it contained was a half-frozen\u00a0veggie burger and a bag of cherries.<\/p>\n
“Cherries? Can you eat cherries?”<\/p>\n
Her eyes lit up again. “Yes!” she said. I handed the bag to her. I was sorry that it wasn’t a full 2-pound bag, but at least having had some of them, I knew they were very good. I had been looking forward to sharing them with Tom.<\/p>\n
“Thank you so much!”<\/p>\n
Up ahead, the light turned green. She smiled again and moved on, saying again, “Thank you!”<\/p>\n
I don’t know if she was a vet, and I don’t care. I don’t know what circumstances led her to be so desperate that she has to walk the road in rags holding a sign and begging politely to long streams of strangers.<\/p>\n
I just know that there but for the grace of God go you or I.<\/p>\n
Christ said, “Judge not, that you may not be judged.” Matthew 7:1<\/p>\n
He also said, “\u00a0<\/sup>For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,<\/span><\/span> I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.\u2019 ” Matthew 25:35-36<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I feel the isolation so strongly these days. I know so few of my neighbors. I read online discussions that seem bent on making the divisions in our country worse. I see harsh\u00a0judgment passed against entire\u00a0groups of people. All of it makes us more and more isolated from one another.<\/p>\n Some would\u00a0say that isolation\u00a0is the condition of modernity, a condition that has been with us for far more than 100 years. If I live to be 100<\/a>, I hope we humans have evolved just a little – enough to deliberately overcome some of that isolation.<\/p>\n It seems appropriate that it’s Edward Hopper’s\u00a0birthday today. \u00a0Hopper painted isolation\u00a0beautifully<\/a>, as in the featured image above, “Gas,” 1940. (The painting is currently on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago\u00a0for a special exhibit<\/a>.)<\/p>\n He was born July 22, 1882.\u00a0Today’s penny is a 1982, the day Hopper would have turned 100.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was sitting at one of those interminable stoplights, when you get off the interstate and have to wait for three light changes of two minutes each just to make a left turn. It was blazing hot and I had a swig of water. Then I saw her. A woman with a ragged short haircut, … read more A bag of cherries<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[344,35,1123,1125,1124,1126,160,20],"class_list":["post-8695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shelter","tag-344","tag-art","tag-edward-hopper","tag-homeless","tag-isolation","tag-judgment","tag-painting","tag-tom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8695"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8699,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8695\/revisions\/8699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}