Enough

I was standing at the corner of Pape and Danforth, earbuds cancelling the living noise of my neighbourhood, my own little bubble, when someone tapped my arm. I held a closed umbrella in one hand and in the other a plastic bag with a tuna sandwich in wax paper, for later, some blackberries (two-for-one), and some organic strawberries (they taste better). I turned to see an older woman, seventyish, with a cane and a pained expression on her face. I removed one of my earbuds and raised me eyes at her in a friendly gesture.

“I’m sorry, young man, if I could ask you...ohhhhh...” She grimaced. “Could I could ask you for help....getting across?” I froze for a few seconds, accustomed as I am to gliding through the world, people passing by like plastic figures in a diorama. Then I smiled at her.

“Oh, ah, of course. Of course!” I put out my elbow, because that’s how these things are done, and asked her to take it. She murmured her thanks and did. We hobbled across the intersection at a glacial pace. I stole a glance now and then at the countdown on the crossing light until it flashed orange, and still we continued to inch our way across. A pickup truck grumbled halfway into the intersection, waiting to make a right turn as we closed the last few yards. I expected him to honk or make a gesture but he didn’t. Maybe one can’t judge a person by his truck.

Having reached the other side, the world expanding again—it had narrowed as I fulfilled my role, feeling like all eyes were on me, my insecurity rearing up despite how ridiculous it is to think that strangers give two honks about a tall man in a puffer coat helping a hobbled lady across an intersection. She was breathing rather heavily and I stood awkwardly, the plastic bag and umbrella clutched in one hand, the other hand seeking something to hold or a place to hide. It eventually burrowed into my right jeans pocket.

“Hoo...well...I can’t thank you enough. I wish I could get to my car. I was...just at...the doctor, and then my knee hurted after.” She had an Eastern European accent, maybe Greek, maybe Slavic. She continued. “You must be busy...it is ok...I will ask for help to reach my car.” 

It took me a second to register but then I realized: she had some ways to go, had no chance of making it to her car unsupported, and was, in an exceedingly polite and, I believe, sincere way, giving me an out.

And I took it.

“Well, you’re very welcome,” I said, like an idiot, reminding myself in a flash of the time when the girl I was debilitatingly in love with in high school asked me before the Christmas holidays if we could hang out and I’d said “yeah, sure” and, petrified of making some sort of mistake, suavely failed to reach out to her in any way whatsoever. 

In the record of my life, my failures to try, to risk it all, as it were—silly, now, since we risk nothing in matters of love—these are the grooves that I wanted most to wear down.

I smiled at the woman, who smiled back at me (expectantly? I cannot be sure). “Take good care of that knee know, and my pleasure”, I said, as if I was a greeter at the cardiac unit at the hospital nearby, helping old folks about to receive a new valve with directions to the elevator.

She faltered, smiled sadly, and nodded quickly, before turning around and giving me her back. Clearly looking for a friendly face. Sensing that I’d failed, my cheeks flushed, I turned and walked, mentally adding another failure to my ledger of regret. A few drops hit the brim of my cap and I opened my umbrella as it started to drizzle. I murmured to myself, “I am enough.” My therapist had taught me the mantra as a way to accept myself, wholly and unconditionally. We are not meant to be who are aren’t. Maybe I was finally learning. The rain picked up the and I didn’t look back.

***

All of this flashed through my mind in the long seconds between the woman’s quiet, vulnerable plea for help and my stuttered reply. Yet, and it gives me both pride and incalculable amazement to realize, I did not leave the poor woman standing in the rain on the corner. This is what happened.

I stared stupidly at the woman for a second before understanding that she had further to go and needed my help. I looked at the bag in my hand for a second and realized that my walk home could wait. “No problem, I’ll help you,” I said. The woman brightened.

“Oh, thank you, thank you so much.” She took my arm again. I asked her what her name was. It was Nadia. She was seventy-four, and was the primary caregiver for her ninety-year old husband, who “has some problems but he’s perfect up here”, as she gestured to her head. She he was everything to her, just as he was.

We shuffled for a while along the sidewalk. A man in a hurry walked past us and a woman walking a daschund looked us up and down. I felt good. Un-self-conscious, if that is a word. What I was doing was a normal thing, a bygone thing. In fact, this opportunity to help someone was something I’d been looking for without realizing it. I had a smile on my face.

“Are you Greek?” I asked Nadia. She said that she was Serbian. “Same part of the world. We share a lot.”

I asked her about her kids and she told me about her two daughters, one in her late forties with her own daughter in her twenties. “Ah,” I said. “So you’re a grandma.” She chuckled, then winced and paused, inhaled, exhaled, and then took my arm again. She was evidently in some pain. “My husband always carries pain medicine,” she said. “But, I have none. I went to the doctor today for this knee and it was ok. Then I went down the stairs and when I come outside...ohhh my god. Hurt so much.” We continued shuffling. I asked about her granddaughter.

“Ah, Hanna, yes...a wonderful girl. Beautiful and happy. She’s my favourite, you know.” She glanced at me with a twinkle in her eye. “Of course, I love the other children as well...two boys from my other daughter. But Hanna...” She paused again and looked me up and down, in what I’d describe as an assessing look.

I knew a Hanna, not many years ago. Brilliant blue eyes. Smile that would turn a young man’s carefully-laid plans to ruin. We’d been friends in high school. When we were fifteen, she asked if I’d visit her at the tea room, where she worked the sleepy after-school hours. I shied away, and watched her walk home from my apartment window. When we were seventeen, and she was blessedly single for a moment, if not without half a dozen suitors, we became briefly close again. That was when she invited me to see her over Christmas. 

Hanna was a charming, smart, simple girl. She didn’t play with boys. She allowed them to love her or be friends with her and gave of herself in return. I always thought, naively, that we’d end up together. Until school ended, that is. She moved to Montreal and I stayed and I nursed my missed chances and sore heart for a few years until, eventually, all that was left was her occasional appearances in my dreams, in which we’d laugh and hold hands. Then I’d wake up to my empty apartment and make myself oatmeal. 

Life did move on, of course. I dated girls on and off, had grown into myself, a good job, my own flat. I’d be the first to admit that I had work to do, to feel like I’d arrived as full-fledged person. I am enough, and all that. We all go through this. Don’t we?

Nadia took my arm again. “She’s about your age, I think. She’s single, you know,” she said in that devilish way of elderly matchmakers from time immemorial. I laughed. I asked her what Hanna’s last name was. Nadia said it was the same as hers. I stopped walking. I swallowed. I stammered. I’d heard right. Nadia asked me if I’d like to visit for tea some time, and said she’d invite Hanna, while somehow managing to elbow me lightly in the ribs with the arm that was hanging on to me for support.

I’ll confess that my thoughts—all my thoughts until then—dissolved. My ambitious plan to make a salad to eat with my tuna sandwich, the work I’d intended to do while watching Netflix that night, the gnawing guilt over not having been to the gym for the last couple weeks, the state of my life. Of course I accepted.

Some weeks passed and I received her phone call. The afternoon of the visit I fussed over myself in front of the mirror for an hour before I thought of Nadia and her ailing husband, perfect “just as he was”. I took off the seldom-worn clothes I was posing in and wore what made me comfortable.

I write this now, some years after meeting Nadia. She passed on recently. We became close. Hanna and I miss her a lot.