Po
Boy Views
By
Phil
LaMancusa
ZuZu’s
Petals
Or
Three-sixty-five
Hero
Whiskers the cat waits at Jefferson Feed out on the
highway for a forever home. Whiskers isn’t young, her chances are slim. At her
last home, where she didn’t ask for a baby to be born, a toddler who decided to
pick her up be the tail got scratched, now there’s a sign on her cage that says
“Sweet and gentle, best for a home without
children” Today the store is dark and lonely, closed for a holiday. Whiskers doesn’t know what she did wrong to
deserve desertion by the couple that she loved and loved her in return. She
cries.
Marcie, a single mother of two, takes a taxi to work;
buses are on holiday schedule and she would be either an hour early or an hour
late for her shift. ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’ she reads on a passing
billboard; “yeah right” she mutters
to herself as they speed through cold and empty streets. She prays that she’ll
make enough waiting on strangers to cover her expenses for the day. Her holiday
won’t start until the afternoon, her kids will spend Christmas morning with the
neighbors.
Malcolm
(Mal), the taxi driver, is as quiet and introspective as Marcie on the way
across town---Christmas quiet—reflecting on his life such as it is (a universal
tendency during any holiday season). He should
be home but he’d rather be out here; his Old Lady’s back is out again, his
daughter’s run off with some no account and his boy is on his fourth
tour—getting shot at--- in some Third World country. Mal didn’t figure that
growing old would be like this and has the suspicion that this is as good as it’s
going to get.
Winston
is picking up an extra shift this week and that’s okay with him. Winston is
‘retired’, meaning that the world thinks that he’s too old to employ and he can
only pick up work part-time: buffet tender, roast carver, food runner or--- in
today’s case—omelet maker. So, Christmas for Winston will be spent standing in
the dining room with a frying pan and a grin, he has no family to speak of, so
it’s all the same to him.
Sophia
was dropped off at the pound one Christmas day. She was pregnant, had
heartworms and someone had felt it necessary to dock her tail. She went into
kennel shock and if it hadn’t been for someone at the shelter recognizing that
she was a sweet, special dog, she would have gotten a dose of gas for the
Holidays. Sophie doesn’t really remember
that time; she’s got a good home now and to her a holiday is when everyone is
at home and lovin’ on her and each other.
Junior
sits in Orleans Parish Prison this holiday season. Everything about it sucks:
the food, the wardrobe and the company that he’s forced to keep.If he’s guilty
of mayhem, mischief, murder, maliciousness, mistaken identity or merely WWB
(walking while black), that will be up to the authorities to decide after their days off. Meanwhile he marks
time; neither Junior or his family can make his bail, especially this time of
year, and to them Santa is just some fat white dude who favors other people’s
children. Oh well, maybe they’ll put some cranberry on his baloney sandwich and
have some kind of Christian service on Christmas day. Thank you, Lord.
“Della and Jim live in a shabby flat and
they are poor. But they love each other. He sells his watch to
buy combs for her beautiful long hair, while she sells her tresses to buy him
an elegant chain for his time piece. Gift of the Magi; yadda, yadda, yadda.
Somewhere
in Norman Rockwell’s world a nuclear family (mother, father, 2.5 children) sits
down to a wonderful holiday dinner. Their rescue puppy and adopted
tortoiseshell feline lie snoozing by the fire. Or, Grandma’s clasping her hands
with joy at the front door as that GM station wagon full of children and
grandchildren pulls up for a ‘real’ holiday with the ‘folks’, complete with
snow on the ground, stockings hung by the chimney with care and presents under the tree. It’s possibly
your life, but…
Somewhere
at an urban mission the homeless shuffle in line for a hot meal before spending
the night at some cardboard condominium under the overpass. There’s no fire and
visions of being rousted by the local screws disturb their dreams.
There
are a million stories of holiday miseries and miracles. Miracles being in short
supply these days, we’ve got to accept that no matter what our tribulations are,
there are those that are less fortunate, ofttimes much less fortunate. Be at
peace knowing that we’re all doing the best we can from our beginnings to our
ends with the tools that we have been provided and that a modicum of empathy
for our fellow creatures can go a very long way.
This
holiday season, think about taking a little time out to ring a bell to give an
angel its wings. Happy Holidays.
