Yesterday Darien turned 42 days old or six weeks of age. Born at 7.4 pounds, he checked in at the pediatrician’s almost two pounds heavier just one more later. I swear he must weigh nearly eleven pounds now. He almost fits the three month range of pajamas I have for him. He is quickly becoming a big boy.
Still, holding him is relatively easy and light. I will even carry him several blocks away to Ocean Avenue and back for one of our many street life travails. Just as easy to transport was the elderly man two hefty firemen scraped off the sidewalk. I was walking up 7th Street in downtown San Francisco, hurrying to reach BART on my way to teaching a graduate class of basic business writing and speaking, when I spied a man down.
Everyone simply walked by him as he huddled in a snail like curled shell position right on a pedestrian traffic sidewalk. The owner of the hip bar a few feet away made fun of the guy, asking if he needed a road map to somewhere. I shooed him away and asked the street guy if he needed an ambulance. He stared at and through me seeing little. With no teeth, he still cared how he looked because somehow or someone had died all the gray out of his hair.
At first he said no, shaking valiantly and striving to stand up. He was drunk for sure. Yet he seemed to have some dignity left somehow. The clothes on him were clean and ordinary–dark blue khakis, white shirt, with brown cardigan sweater. Shoes and socks were solidly on his feet. He just couldn’t stand up is all.
The 911 woman asked me a ton of questions but sure enough the fire engine arrived in a few minutes. The four men looked at the sidewalk creature in that dismissive way our civil servants can after several years of service. One looked at me and thanked me for even stopping and then wished me a Merry Christmas. Two stepped in close to the old guy, who had made it to his knees trying to stand up, and took one look then the beefy firemen literally grabbed the drunk grandpa by the scruff of the neck and seat of his pants to simply carry him over to a wall where he could rest against. Took a few seconds and looked identical to how I sometimes scoop Darien up to move him to the next spot.
Sounds strange to compare a beautiful healthy newborn to a degenerate alcoholic. Yet in a way they connect for how vulnerable each is. That guy passed out was once Darien’s size and potential. Now sixty five or so years later here he was again like a newborn with no teeth, probably diapered, and feather light. How arbitrary life is. Everybody practically spat on this grandpa guy on the sidewalk, so disparaging were they. Something about his plight grabbed me though. I held my hand on his back while we waited for the fire truck and he seemed to breathe slightly easier.
I had to leave, too, because my seminar began in 15 minutes. I was just a few minutes late, thankfully; on the remaining walk to BART I cried a few tears that I gently wiped off my face. The random hopeless drunk will probably always make me cry not only because I personally recognize that drunken desperate moment of his but at how jaded and calloused we are walking side by side each other on the street.
