a few metaphors
keep walking, little jellyfish
This is about Mary. Theotokos Mary, I mean. The one who held the One wider than the heavens inside of her. Perhaps we’ll learn to live like Mary, wider than the heavens: hope like her, open our hearts wider than they were before, like her, this year. Or next year. Each year, one year at a time.
M needed a bus pass. M can’t walk, due to a stroke from an overdose that left them with limited mobility on one side of their body. M has Medicare, so M is eligible for a half-price bus pass, which means a lot when your monthly income is under $1000, right?
So M is eligible for a monthly bus pass that is $24.50 instead of $49. Cool!
I help M download the Transit app onto their phone, and we sit down to sign them up for a bus pass. There’s an option for a half-price rider—okay, yes! That’s you, M! Here we go!
Well what do you know, it’s impossible for M to sign up as a half-price rider on the app. They have to walk (as previously established, a difficult if not impossible task, because of the stroke) down to the transit service’s offices—a two-mile walk from their apartment—and show their Medicare card to be eligible for this discount.
Why don’t they have a place on the app for M to upload their ID and supporting documents, like, say, an insurance card, that prove their eligibility?
Great question. Plenty of apps in states from Illinois to New York provide just such services.
Probably because 1) the transit company does not have the money to hire a user experience designer. The UX designer is working for Uber and making six figures harvesting pennies from the poor. And because 2) the transit company is woefully underfunded and probably wants to incentivize people using the full fare. And finally, 3) in the United States, we are allergic to generosity and are paralyzed by the terror of poor people getting a pitifully tiny windfall.
These sorts of situations, where it becomes so blatantly obvious how little we want to help the people most in need, how much we need to make people pay for whatever crumbs of necessities we make them scramble for, how little dignity or kindness or charity or goodness there is in our technocratic systems, make me want to scream. My inner Karen-meter is rising by the second.
So I did a small pilgrimage of solidarity for M in the slush, snow, and ice today, in penance for the sins of our underfunded public services that go unused by the rich and make themselves inaccessible to the poor.
This pilgrimage was unintended, but it was the second of two seemingly fruitless walks in one week.
What prompted this pilgrimage was the car: which broke down as I was driving James to the airport on Friday at 3:30 am.
At the time, I had no idea that the fuel pump had stopped working, all I knew was that, as we were entering Harrisburg airport, the gas pedal stopped functioning. We coasted James to the gate, and then I tried to problem-solve what to do next. I decided to try to drive the car to the Wawa across the way, to fill the car with gas. Perhaps it was empty? (We can only ascertain its gas level through math. The gas meter does not work. The math did not indicate that the gas was empty, but there are many variables in this math, so perhaps this was the problem.) On the way to the Wawa, two things happened: one, the power steering went out, and the car was stalled, unable to move a hair, in the middle of the Harrisburg Pike at 3:30 am. And, second, I remembered that I had no way to pay for gas.
The week before, I had celebrated turning in the reviewed proofs of my book (turns out I had over-corrected them. Or, perhaps in the parlance of the Great British Bake-off, overproved them. But at the time, I did not know this, and I was simply celebrating the expansion of one’s eyes and mind after combing through words on a screen for a week and half.) by walking to the grocery store to turn in our milk bottle and get a new one.
If you are thinking this sounds like a very lame way to celebrate, you are welcome to keep that opinion to yourself. (Also we did go watch the Notre Dame game later that day, although that was more in deference to the culture I come from than my choice of how to spend an evening.) I had a very nice walk to Rye and Radish food hub, where I turned in our milk bottle and got a new one, and even treated myself to a little coffee for the walk home (there goes that $2 bottle deposit). As I approached the till to pay, I hummed a little tune of gladness to myself.
My song was to turn to sorrow.
As I tapped my card to the little screen reader, the terrible red x appeared: “Transaction declined.”
Huh, that’s weird, I thought.
Now the lady at the till, she clocked my tea (as the kids say), instantly. She was like: oh this poor sweet lady is out of money. The card does not work because there is not $6 in her bank account. Now, there has definitely been times in my life where that has certainly been the case, but now was not one of them. (At those times, you just wouldn’t treat yourself to the little coffee. Or you’d put the milk back. Come on, till lady, this may not be your first rodeo, but it’s not mine either.)
I was in proud possession of several hundred dollars (thanks to the generosity of the Jesuits and several readers of this newsletter), and so I knew there was enough in the bank account to cover a $6 charge at Rye and Radish. I knew it.
So I called my bank and I said: look here, what gives? Now, as I checked my account online, I had noticed a stray $2.50 charge from somewhere in Michigan. Now that’s odd, I thought, I hadn’t (sadly) been to Michigan in a while.
So I mentioned it to the Fraud Lady. Well, Ms. Fraud Lady informed me that, in fact, someone had tried to charge $100 to my card at that same spot in Michigan, but that had been flagged as fraud instantly. You don’t say, I thought.
This all began to make sense, as I had tried to purchase a book of Kathleen Norris poems online through the University of Pittsburgh press, and my transaction had been declined. I had assumed that it was the fault of my internet connection, which is faulty, and had been doing me absolutely dirty while I depended on it to save all the mark-ups I made on those proofs. I had even sent them a little message: Help! Your site is not letting me buy this book of poems!
Well there I was in Rye and Radish, on the phone for far too long, fraud charges falling down like pieces into place, as Poet Laureate of Blogger Girls, Taylor Allison Swift, once sang.
Turns out those Michigan Hustlers had tried to ring up my card in Midway—not the airport, but the town in Arkansas—as well. How did they get this information I wondered? Did you give anyone your card number over the phone? Ms. Fraud Lady asked. Or on unsecured websites? I’m sure I have, I said. Who knows. It feels very exposed to have information stolen. Like someone can see through your clothes, but you don’t where. And you don’t know how to cover up.
They stole the wrong person’s identity, James laughed. I was offended. I have a very good identity to steal. Anyone would want it. But, yeah, to steal the digits of a visa debit card that’s attached to a bank account regularly in double digits with no glamorous sky-high credit limit. Yes, they did indeed choose a very small pond in which to fish.
Anyhow, the sweet Till Lady had rung up everything for me on the store card as a gift while I was on the phone.
When I got home, I knelt down to pet a cat on our front stoop. The milk bottle touched the stoop and shattered, milk spilling everywhere, to the delight of the cat and to my stunned silence.
Only then did I remember I had twenty dollars in my pocket.
As I sat in the car in the middle of the Harrisburg Pike at 3:30 am, I thought to myself: now what?
There was no way to pay for gas if I made it to the gas station, since I was without cash on hand or a card to pay for it (my card being canceled due to the fraud).
Thankfully, two gentlemen stopped and pushed the car to the shoulder for me.
The car was towed to our neighborhood car dealer. And they informed us that it was indeed the fuel pump that was deficient and our alternator (my top suspect) was doing just fine.
So, instead of saying: this is not on my list of things to do today, I’ll come get the car tomorrow. Or: I do not feel well, I do not want to walk over in the cold to get the car, I said: I’ll be right over and walked over to pay for it, because they had called me four times, so my people-pleasing tendencies kicked it: it must be more convenient for the car shop if I come and get the car now.
Thinking this would be a quick trip, I grab the community debit card and walked over to the car shop. Wouldn’t you know it, the community debit card also did not work.
I walked down to the bank—1 mile—to see if I could get the required cash out of the ATM. No dice. I walked back, handed the car keys to the shop man and said: I’ll see you tomorrow. When I got back home, I checked the online banking system, and I realized our card had gotten flagged when I used it to help our neighbor pay for a weekly bus pass.
Happy MLK Day, I thought, staring at the closed bank doors.
This afternoon, R visited the house, excited because it looks like he’ll be getting a room at the YMCA. One of the seminarians looked for trousers that were R’s size, but couldn’t find any. So he gave R a pair of his own jeans, because they were the right size.
R told us a story, because you may not think you’re making a difference. R told us the story of an old man walking along a beach, seeing a young boy throw one stranded jellyfish after the other into the ocean. There’s no point, young lad, he said. You can’t possibly save all the jellyfish. The young boy threw one more into the ocean and said: I made a difference to that one.
I can’t write out what I thought on the way home from the bank on the way back to the car dealership to give them back the keys to the car, but it went something like F this S.
Then I saw the sunset over the Susquehanna River Bluffs, and you know what? Any walk where you see a sunset is a good one. You’re not living if you miss the sunrise and the sunset. Those are the best parts.
I thought of M, who was having mobility issues, too, like me, but theirs couldn’t be solved with walking. How lucky you are to be able to walk. To see a sunset. Many people can’t.
I thought of how much of life is just walking. And it’s okay to have momentary frustrations or setbacks. Maybe don’t rush to do everything. Maybe save some challenges for tomorrow next time, I thought. Don’t rush to be on everyone else’s schedule. Just walk, slowly—together.
Maybe the reason you forgot you had $20 in your pocket was because the milk was going to spill anyway. No use crying over it, you know?
It’s a very funny position to be in to have a lot but no way to use it. To have something to give but no way to give it.
I’m not sure what that means, either.
When I got back, C was sleeping on the front living room floor, under the Christmas tree. We gave away the last Christmas present today, I took the lights off the tree yesterday. Christmas was almost over, except for that last gift, always with us, refusing all bedding, his backpack his pillow, his worldly possessions spread out on the floor next to him. A very messy nativity.
What to do with all this? Who knows. Keep walking. Watch the sunset. Listen and watch. Hold it all in your heart. Perhaps one day, you’ll know.