Thank you to my loyal fans who have stopped in to visit during this time of transition. I love my new place!

I have three or four brand new Imagine Weblog posts I am tweaking for release, along with a huge amount of music and video for my website, but let me start with the following. I want to relate an experience I’ve had in the past 48 hours.

Holyoke is not a wealthy town. Downtown, though it might have once been a thriving industrial center, is pretty depressed. Two days ago, a woman approached me on the sidewalk and asked me for spare change. Then she pointed down the street, apparently to her favorite restaurant, “Can you take me in there and buy me chicken?” she asked. She was old, and very skinny. I took the money from my pocket. I had a one and a five. I gave her the one. “Can I have a little more to buy some food?” she asked. “I’m hungry.”

“It’s Christmas,” she added.

I said that if I gave her the five I wouldn’t eat that night myself. That wasn’t really true, although it was all the cash I had. I gave her the dollar. She thanked me and we parted ways.

Somehow the experience settled in, and I thought about it that night and started to suffer. I’ve been approached by street people many times before: drunks, homeless people, and though I’ve been affected by some of them, most I don’t even remember. This woman was different for some reason, maybe because she really was hungry. I kept thinking about her. I hated that I hadn’t given her the rest of my money. I hated that she was hungry, and that life had been difficult for her. It caused me pain.

Wednesday came and went. A lot happened, and then it was over.

This morning I went to my music academy where i teach special needs students how to play music, and although I needed to go back to work later, I came home, got directions to that street again, and drove to the same place hoping to find her. The short drive was tinged with a kind of aching sadness: a sense that I might never see her again, and that my failure would be something I would have to live with.

I found the street and parked. Two minutes later, before I could get out of my car, she walked by. Or was it her? I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like her. She had passed me, so I got out of my car quickly and walked up to her. Once I saw her face and heard her voice, I felt myself relax.

It was her.

I asked her, what was her real name?, how was she?, did she have a place to sleep? Her name was Myrna, and all that stuff seemed okay. She has a place, but they use her check to pay the rent. I took Myrna to her favorite place (they recognized her right away), and bought her a meal.

She wouldn’t sit down to eat it, just took her chicken and her soda bottle and walked with me back towards my car. “Thank you,” she said, as I drove away. “I love you.” She didn’t have to say those things. I was happy just to see her enjoy it.

I gave thanks for the opportunity. I don’t really know why this happened, or why it affected me so much. Myrna is very small, does not have teeth, and compulsively licks her lips. For some reason, despite this, I looked at her and felt an overwhelming feeling of love for her. I wasn’t lying that first day when I told Myrna that I didn’t have much money. I used my Discover card to buy that meal, but I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to do it. I’m so glad I got a second chance.

Tristan L. Sullivan