Thou Shall Share Space

Yesterday, Fyo and I were up and out of our new Brooklyn brownstone (!) early for a  trip to our favorite grocery store, Trader Joe's in downtown Brooklyn. Walking from the bus stop to the store and pushing Fyo in his stroller, a parade of ambulances and paramedics with flashing lights and sirens flew down the street and then came to a halt. Then right in front of us on the sidewalk were paramedics pushing what I swear looked like a wheel burrow with a woman inside of it. The woman was skim milk blue-white, mostly naked except for a t-shirt and underwear. Except for a few bruises on her face and here and there across her body, her skin had that other worldly look of marble statues in museums. She was conscious, but drugged beyond coherency.
 
I'm a thin skinned sensitive sort, and instantly started to cry at the sight of her as I thought, oh heavens what have you been through and what are you about to go through? Indeed, the mind can spiral out considering the possibilities of how she ended up where she did - and none of the possibilities are nice or pretty. It was warmer out; a balmy Spring like 40 degrees compared to the weather we've been having, but still way too cold to spend the night out doors half naked on the sidewalk.

Looking at her, I couldn't help but think: You are someone's daughter. Someone must be worried. I think such things now that I am a parent.

There's something about seeing another human being - even a complete stranger - in extreme vulnerability that punches me in the gut and instantly makes me feel vulnerable too. Maybe I'm reminded of my own humanity, or that another place, another time, another set of circumstances, another set of choices, it could have been me or anyone else I know and love. Indeed, I had a distant cousin who met such a fate and now lies in the family plot in a Portland cemetery, despite her having had an advantageous childhood.

Husband has a favorite quote from the Ric Burns documentary on New York, that the unspoken commandment of large cities like New York is thou shall share space. And this is true in many cities, where we see much more of each other's lives, even the moments you usually assume happen behind closed doors in the privacy of one's own home. I think of a friend from college who one day sat in his office in a building downtown when a man walked in the entrance and took a gun to his own head. Or even the smaller moments, when sitting on a bus and listening to a stranger argue with her mother on her phone or that strangers on the bus and subway watch me give Fyo his crackers and biscuits while in Portland, I'd do the same thing in the privacy of our own car. When Fyo drops his cracker onto the floor of the bus, he gets down to pick it up and eat it, another woman tells me he's eating his cracker off the floor and that I shouldn't let him do this. (I don't know that this is what Hillary Clinton meant when she said it takes a village...). I shrug and say, "I'm not worried about it. His immune system is stronger than all of ours." She rolls her eyes at me, and I can see the words "Bad Mother!" cross her mind from one ear to the other.

In cities, you do share space, and you witness -to some extent- more of the private moments of people, even the ones that punch you in the gut. But I like it.  When I'm on the subway and even if all the other passengers are absorbed in books, magazines, knitting, Kindles, iPhones and iPads and so forth, or even walking down the street with my son in his stroller, I am always reminded that there's more than just me and my family in the world, and there are bigger concerns in the world than mine.

My heart breaks for the woman we saw yesterday as well as for the people who love her, and the sight of her moved me. I can't say it moved me to a Buddha like moment of giving up all my earthly comforts and loves to dedicate my life to the end of suffering, but it moved me enough to remember that when we share space, a little concern, compassion and "good thoughts on the wings of fairies" as my great-grandmother used to say when we saw an ambulance drive by, doesn't hurt.

I have a fear of the suburbs, and my fear stems from the very thing that some people seek when they move to the suburbs: that you can seal yourself away into your house, yard and car. Get into your car while it's in the garage with the doors shut and you will never have to meet your neighbors. You can forget - except when you see them on the news - that anyone different from you exists. In the city, at least in this one, you can't and I think that's a good thing