Frost Warning

I know, I know. I’m no stranger to the power and impact of the human voice.

I could have asked more gently.

We had seen them approaching us on a sidewalk at the park, taking up the entire walkway with an undisciplined, long-leashed dog. As they drew closer, chatting and pushing a stroller, they did nothing to shift to their right, allowing us the room to pass. John decided to move to a parallel dirt path with Iris.

Just before we collided, I stopped.  “Could you move your dog, please?”

I was pissed; I was sick and tired of encountering so many unconscious or unaware or rude or careless or detached strangers in crosswalks and automobiles and doorways and on TV and social media and in white-cuffed delegations and, and, and…

My tone was icy.

In a split second, I was pelleted with complaints about why I couldn’t ask it in a nicer way and how rude I was. How wrong I was. Shame, shame, shame; I was the one to blame.

I explained to them that I just wanted to be able to have room to walk on the sidewalk. With a measured tone, John tried to reason with these two women half our age, but the buttons had been pushed, the code was entered, and the bomb dropping had already begun.

Humanity was burning.

After a moment, I paused. I took a breath, opened my heart and said, humbly, “I apologize”.

My words fell on ears deafened by a verbal wall that had broken the ground and skyrocketed between us. They went on and on.

“I apologize”, I said again.

The assaults kept coming.  “Did you hear me?” I implored. “I said ‘I apologize’.”

They began to accuse ‘you white people for having it all and not caring about anything’. I hadn’t even considered, much less noticed, their ethnicity.

John replied, “You know nothing about my ancestry.”

“And we don’t care!” they shouted, and marched away.

I was stunned. Empty. Saddened and shocked by the escalation of this encounter between perfect strangers walking their dogs, in a park, on a dazzling autumn morning.

After we got home, I went straight to the garden. I stared blankly at the blotchy tomatoes, barely clinging to their flesh-burnt vines, and realized how close we all are these days to the edge of losing our resilience, integrity, and compassion when our word world turns cold.

A few hearty garden plants, with the help of a tarp or two, have withstood recent night frosts. I reached toward a rose-colored raspberry, gently released it from its thorny clutch, and passed it through my downturned lips.

The sweetest, most innocent burst of newly ripened fruit soothed my tongue and warmed my heart. Tears thawed my hardened face.

The world of wonder was, after all, still intact.

©2017 Lynn Skinner