A warm cup of something

Today as I was walking into a Panera Bread restaurant in a shopping mall, I noticed a man who appeared to be leaning over and trying to catch small dry leaves that were blowing in a small circle near his feet, the way that leaves sometimes blow in corners and eddies of shopping malls.

I heard him saying something, to himself or to the wind, as there was no one nearby. I heard him say something about “acting out” – as if expressing his frustration at something having been said to him by someone about ‘acting out’. Then I heard him said the word “homeless”, and I knew he was talking about the pain of being homeless, and that whoever said this to him didn't understand the pain of homelessness and of this ‘acting out’.

As I went in, I felt something about the pain of what this man must go through in a day, and what it could be like to simply not have a home. To be outside in the March weather with the sun shining but the cold wind saying that the elements remain yet daunting, and the lack of true shelter in a way relentlessness.

I didn’t find what I had planned to eat in the restaurant and went to leave, but paused inside because I felt I wanted to respond to his pain in some way. I hadn’t seen his face, didn’t know if he might be unstable, and didn’t know whether helping could be enabling in some way. I also didn’t want to insult him either by offering something. But I put a couple dollars in my hand and walked out and toward him not knowing what I would say. I noticed a trash barrel he had with a broken broom handle and other litter he had perhaps been picking up.

“It’s cold could out here”, I said “and you looked like you could use a cup of coffee”.

“Thanks” he said, in a brief moment of connecting. “Is the coffee good in there?” he said, seeming to like the idea.
“Pretty good” I said.

I was glad to see his face, and the kindness I felt in him in his eyes.

I hope he had a moment’s respite, from this moment of contact, and from a cup of warm something.