It’s too bad that they have to live like this, I thought, thrusting the ladle into the green bean casserole, drawing out another scoop of goop, and sloshing it onto another Styrofoam plate. My unlined face glanced now to the cloudy green casserole, now to the forlorn and reddened eyes of each recipient.
We were at the last stop of the night, a putrefying hovel long past being condemned. The stench of beer, smoke, and rotting wood oozed from every inch of the place, sending up a foul odor to tingle in my sensitive nostrils. It was the stench of poverty that offended me, though I did not realize it. I was there only to do what I had been taught was right: to feed the homeless, as my family usually did with a local ministry on Sundays.
My mother had said that even the poor have dignity, and I had seen it. Amidst the green bean casseroles, delousing, barber-shopping, and clothing distribution going on around me, I realized it. I had met Ph.D.s on the streets, millionaires gone suddenly bankrupt, and veterans with Purple Hearts. I knew that poverty could happen to anyone, and that’s why I was there — to minister to those in need. But I did not yet understand.
Suddenly, three people walked into my vision, and one walked into my life — though I did not know this at the time. Two were very drunk old men, not ill-natured, but definitely tragic, in my opinion.
How sad, I thought. Why do they do that to themselves?
The third was a paradox. A blonde little paradox with light blue eyes and chubby little legs. He seemed to be searching for something, slowly walking around the yard in front of the porch where the food tables were set up. His scanning, serious eyes made me shiver. I turned my eyes back to the green slop and kept filling the endless plates.
To my immense discomfort, one of the drunken men approached me a few moments later. “Hey,” he shouted in a less-than-reverent manner, slurring his speech in a way I could barely understand, “He wants to give you a hug.” He was referring to the little blonde paradox.
I had gladly served the poor, but had never touched them. Something about personal space and comfort zones flashed through my consciousness. But this was different. Somewhat hesitant, I said, “OK.” At this assent, the chubby little legs came running toward me and the little paradox embraced my legs as if they were his rope to salvation.
Poor child, I thought. Why did this have to happen to you? It’s so sad. So sad.
I looked down into the white, chubby face hugging my knees with such intensity. His icy blue eyes penetrated my soul with a recognition I was not ready to see or accept.
Sister, his eyes were pleading, Sister! I love you. Save me. Sister! Do not forget me!
Time ceased in that instant and he was saying something timeless to my soul, something he wanted me to know, yet I did not understand.
But my mother did. She had also seen the little blonde paradox, the jewel amidst the grime, and she could not forget him. My son! her heart had beat, recognizing in him her own child, and so, the next day, she went back to retrieve him.
This time his birth mother was watching him in a run-down hotel room strewn with roaches, garbage, and potato chips. She was an exotic dancer. Once, a man had poured gasoline on her head and tried to light her hair on fire because she wouldn’t sleep with him. The little paradox had been in the room when this occurred, and he remembered it, though he didn’t understand.
“I can give him a better life,” my mother had said.
“I know,” his mother had said, “Take him.”
So she did.
I was sitting in the living room, studying, when the door of our home opened and my mother walked in with the little paradox. I was rather shocked, because I was not expecting this at all.
There he was, blonde hair, arctic blue eyes, chubby legs, heart of love and all, standing on the doorstep of my own heart. Sister! his eyes shouted. Sister, I am home! The gladness of his heart could not be contained in the glowing smile on his round face.
How nice that we can help him, I thought. I still did not understand.
A few days later, he snuggled into my lap and placed his little head close to my heart and whispered, in a solemn little three-year-old voice, “I love you.”
I was struck by this, because I didn’t understand how he could actually love me. He did not know me; he had not been part of the family from the beginning. He could not love me because of our family’s wealth; he was too young to understand that. Yet there he was, offering me his love and his little child’s heart. I let his words pierce my life.
Then I finally understood what he had said to my soul in that first hug. I finally understood what my soul had wanted to say in reply, and now I said it with the realization of one breaking out of shadow into sunrise.
Brother! my heart said. Brother, I love you. And I always will.
Hugging him as if he was the rope to my salvation, I thanked God for the little paradox who had come out of poverty to bring me into it.
I was 17 years old when we found my little brother while feeding the homeless in our city. He was officially adopted in August of 2001 and is now in the third grade. He was baptized into the Church soon after he came to stay with us, and received his first Holy Communion last year. The first time we took him to Mass, he looked at the priest and whispered excitedly, “I’m going to be up there with Jesus some day!”
He truly helped me to see all men as brothers in Christ. Far from what I originally thought — that we were helping him — he has helped me out of my smug complacency into that genuine poverty of spirit and brotherhood with every person to which we are all called in Christ.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Cari Carpenter is a recent graduate of Franciscan University, where she majored in Computer Science and Mathematics. She now works as an IT Administrator for a telecommunications company in Tampa, FL. Cari is getting married in June.
