A Good Question

A few months ago, I was walking in downtown Corvallis when I saw an elderly woman ahead of me pulling herself along with a walker. I came up beside her, said hello, heard her say hello back, and kept walking. Half a block later, she caught up with me on the corner of 4^th and Adams. 4^th is a state highway. There are 4-lanes, all traveling one-way south towards Eugene. There’s no light there. You have to wait for a break in the traffic to get across. It’s dangerous for anyone. I asked her if she was comfortable crossing alone. “Oh sure,” she said. “I do it all the time.” I crossed with her anyway. As we inched along, I kept my eye out for on-coming traffic. Along the way she told me the buses were all fouled up. They’d closed her stop, so she was headed to the one at the end of my street, another block away. When we finally got there, there were others waiting, all with worried looks: maybe late for work, picking up their kids at school, or making it to the market in time.

Before I left her, I told the woman whose name I didn’t know, that I’d go get my car and give her a ride home if she was still there when I got back. She was, so I put her walker in the hatch, got her settled in and off we went. She was talkative, animated, clear with her directions, got us right to her front door – a tiny pastel apartment amongst other tiny pastel apartments. As she was turning towards her door, grateful to be home, I gave her my phone number. Told her to call me if she ever needed a ride. As I drove away, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. What if she did call me? What if she got in the habit of calling me? What if she needed more than a ride someday?

Then on Thursday, my phone rang. “Hi Bar,” she said. “It’s Marie,” as though we were old friends. “I missed the bus. Could you give me a ride? I’m late for my iPad class.” At that moment, I was re-finishing our kitchen cabinets. I had polyurethane on my hands. “Sure,” I said. “Give me five or ten minutes.” It was the last thing I wanted to do. But how do you say no when you can give someone a ride when they need one?

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Often when I sit down to write, I’m not sure what will come of it. I start and somehow get to the end. This ending poked me. I found myself wishing that as a country we would ask questions like this one more often. Every day.