I probably wouldn’t have even noticed him, there across the street in our neighborhood park on that brisk fall day, hobbling along slowly, dry leaves crunching underfoot.

Except that my then-7-year-old daughter had stopped abruptly and queried too loudly from there in our driveway like kids often do, ‘Look at that old man over there, Mom. What’s he doing?’

And so I stopped my bustling about, looked up from my shooing of the kids into our grey Suburban, the plopping of a load of clothes – outgrown and out of style – into the back of the car to be dropped off at the Goodwill that afternoon, along with the nearly overdue library books and the pile of bills to be mailed.

I stood still for just a moment. And I saw.

He was an old man, bent and grey, wrinkled and disheveled looking. And he had the lid off the beat up green trash can there in the city park, was reaching in, taking others’ discarded food items out, examining them, eating some then and there, and stashing some in his faded tan backpack, for later presumably.

I breathed a prayer for wisdom, knowing that my four young children sought answers. ‘Well, it looks like he’s hungry, doesn’t it?’ And their: ‘But it’s yucky to get food out of the trash. Why doesn’t he just go to the store to get some food if he’s hungry?’ And my: ‘Well, I don’t know for sure, but you have to have money to buy food at the store and you also have to have a way to get to the store…maybe he doesn’t have money or a way to get to the grocery store…’ And them, pondering quietly and then exclaiming exuberantly: ‘We have lots of food at our house! We can share some of our food with him!’

And me, a thousand thoughts racing through my mind in a split second: that we’re on a tight schedule with a long list of errands we have to get done, then piano lessons, then cooking supper, eating supper, cleaning up after supper, then church tonight, we just don’t have time for this today; that he might have lice or bedbugs or some contagious disease or might be a serial killer systematically luring his victims in; that if we give him food once, he might never leave us alone, might find out where we live and come knocking on our door in the middle of the night; that if we approach him, I’ll have to feel something, do something whereas if we stay away, I can avoid both complicated feelings and costly actions, when I already feel overwhelmed with life as it is.

Could feel my children’s eyes on me now, eagerly awaiting my reply. With all the bravado I could muster, ‘Yes, that’s a good idea. Let’s go in and get some food for him.’ So back into the house we went, the kids racing on ahead, rustling through the pantry, shouting excitedly to each other and to me: ‘How about peanut butter, Mom?’ ‘Here’s some green beans, but maybe he doesn’t like green beans…’ ‘Maybe he doesn’t have a can opener, so we shouldn’t give him food in cans…’ ‘I think he’d like bananas, everybody likes bananas, they’re my favorite’ and the like. And me, hoping that maybe we were taking so long choosing the ‘perfect’ foods that the man would be long gone by the time we reemerged out of doors…

But no, we saw him right away, as soon as we walked out the front door there, us carrying tortillas, bananas, peanut butter, and jelly, along with some napkins and a plastic knife. He was still in the same spot, there by the green trash can. Made our way across the street. He didn’t notice us until we were right upon him. I spoke first.

‘Hi. I’m Julie,’ purposefully leaving off my last name, still adhering to the serial killer or stalker possibility, holding my hand out toward him in a way I hoped was friendly enough, wasn’t as hesitant-looking as I felt. He took my hand in his and spoke, croaked really. ‘I’m Larry. Nice to meet you’ and he slowly looked down and around at my herd of children. ‘These are my children – Sylvia, Evelyn, Abraham, and Mordecai,’ me pointing at each one in turn, and them smiling cautiously, trying not to stare. And another ‘nice to meet you’ from Larry. And from me, motioning now to the abundance of food the kids were carrying, ‘We wanted to share some food with you, if you’d like…’ And Larry, slowly: ‘That’s awfully nice of you,’ then taking each food item gingerly from the children as they offered it, as a gift.

Larry and I, we sat at the picnic table and talked then while the kids ran around chasing squirrels and throwing dry, colorful leaves up into the air, me asking questions about how long he’d lived here, if he had any family, how he was faring, and the like. I learned that Larry was one of eight children, had been raised on a farm north of town here, had attended the University of Nebraska – Lincoln in the 1940s, majored in art – drawing and painting and sculpting – against the wishes of his parents, had had a hard time finding steady work most of his life, how he’d been in love once but never married, never had any children, how most of his siblings were dead and he didn’t have much contact with his nieces and nephews anymore, scattered as they were, across the country, how the folks at the courthouse wouldn’t renew his driver’s license now, so he didn’t have a good way to get around. And when we parted ways that day, I felt like I had a new friend.

From then on, the kids were ever on the lookout for Larry, out the front window of our house, from the backseat of our car as we were driving around town, any and every time we played at the park, always comments from them – ‘I wonder where Mr. Larry is today?’ ‘It’s getting pretty cold, Mom, do you think Mr. Larry is staying warm enough?’ ‘Why can’t we find out where Mr. Larry lives, so we can take him some more food?’ ‘Can’t we have Mr. Larry over for supper sometime?’

And we did see Larry around that whole next year off and on, always meandering slowly around the park, always looking in the trash. And we did take him some more food when we saw him, and usually visited a bit too. But I always had a flimsy excuse for the kids as to why we couldn’t invite Larry into our home – ‘Well, we should wait for a night when dad will be here to join us’ or ‘Mr. Larry might not feel comfortable coming to supper since he doesn’t know us very well yet’ or ‘Mr. Larry seemed pretty busy today, I bet he has a lot to do.’

And just when my heart had finally thawed some and I’d thought, ‘The next time we see Larry, I think I will invite him to share a meal with us,’ we didn’t see Larry again.

It’s been nearly three years now. And I don’t know if ‘Mr. Larry’ still lives on this earth or not. Don’t know if he’s sick, or dying, or already gone.

But I do know and will never forget this, the lesson that Larry unknowingly taught me: Showing outward kindness to a stranger is a good thing. But embracing a fellow traveler wholeheartedly with unreserved Love, inviting them in without counting the cost, that is infinitely better.

Henri Nouwen said it well – “Compassion is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity…on the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there.”

And so, if I could go back in time, do things over, I’d gently reach for Larry’s weathered hand, right then and there, that very first day.  And I’d lead him back home with us, Home to share in the Great Feast.

Comments