don’t generally post about these occasional interactions that I have in the area where I work. My place of employment is right in the downtown core and surrounded by several of our city’s hospitals, several homeless and outreach shelters, along with student housing.
Due to the area in which I work, I often see homeless people either sitting on the pavement, sometimes asking for money, sometimes not. I will admit, more often than not, like everyone else in the city, I walk by without giving them a second thought. I don’t carry cash on me, so I wouldn’t have any cash to give to them, and if I did carry cash, I’d be broke because I would be handing out some of my cash.
However, I am also a human, and if I see someone who needs help, and I am able to provide it, I’ll do so. As long as neither of us are going to be harmed, I will step up if I can. And so this story is about one of those times.
The other night, as I was leaving work with one of my coworkers, walking down Yonge Street (I live and work in Toronto), I saw a woman with a walker trying to get up onto the sidewalk from the road. Luckily, she was blocked from any traffic being a threat as there was a large delivery truck blocking the lane behind her.
She was asking for help. People were walking by her. It was just after ten o’clock at night on a busy street. She was probably the least threatening person in the immediate area, and yet, standing with her walker up against the curb, she couldn’t get one person to stop and give her a hand getting her walker up onto the sidewalk. I couldn’t let that go, and so I decided to help her. My friend and coworker was a little surprised, but how much would it take to just give her a hand?
So, I went over to her and asked her if I could give her a hand. She gratefully accepted and I pulled her walker up onto the sidewalk, and then helped her take the step up onto the sidewalk. She was cold, her hands were swollen and she was shivering. She also wanted to smoke a cigarette, so I couldn’t get her to go into the McDonald’s right there to warm up. If I could have, I would have bought her a coffee and left her there.
But she didn’t want to go inside. She did, however, want to talk. I think she really just needed someone to listen to her, because though what she talked about was interesting (and in some cases devastating), it was pretty jumbled up and I didn’t quite understand everything. But that’s okay. Because I did understand the important things she had to say.
She complimented me on my shoes (a pair of teal green Vans, nothing special) and commented on the size of my feet (I have small feet for an adult — Size 4. Yes. I buy children’s shoes, but it’s a bitch when I need dress shoes).
She told me she had been picked up in the Sixties Scoop (a terrible period where government agents literally scooped up Indigenous children from their reserves and families and dumped them in the Residential Schools that have been making the news over the past few years with the discovery of so many unmarked mass graves or were adopted out to white families.
She told me she’d had a child, but that her child had been taken away and she’s never seen him.
Then she mentioned she had been adopted. I think she said she was adopted by a white family, but again, some of what she said got a little jumbled. Mostly, I think, from her being so cold and shivering.
Then she asked me a question I wasn’t expecting. It’s a question that isn’t typically asked of… anyone, really. Yet, it was a relevant question to ask me specifically.
She asked me if I am adopted. Who asks that? I mean, in general, do you ever think to ask someone if they’re adopted?
Here’s the thing: I was adopted. I was five days old when I was adopted by my family. My birth mother was assaulted and became pregnant. It was the 1970s. From what I know about her, based on her name, the area she was living in at the time of my birth, and a few other clues I had from the information I was able to get from her and the government, I believe she had been raised Catholic. And in the 1970s, ‘good, Catholic girls’ didn’t get abortions. So along came the baby she didn’t plan and didn’t want. I was put up for adoption, taken from the hospital where I was born (which is not the one for 40 some odd years I had thought I was born at — no matter), and brought to another hospital where my adoptive grandfather was able to somehow get involved in me being adopted by my family.
A little side note, in finding my birth mother, I also learned that she wanted nothing to do with me, and I respect that. Especially now that I know the circumstances of my birth. I won’t say I am not at all disappointed. I am. A little. But at the same time, I understand and respect her decisions.
Right, so I told this lady that yes, I am adopted. I explained a very short tale about that — simply that I had been five days old. She lamented that I had been ‘taken from my mother too early’. I told her not to feel bad. I was adopted by a wonderful family (I was), and I have a large and loving family (mostly true). She seemed happy about that.
Then, for some reason, she told me her birthday. March 26.
That’s my dad’s birthday. Yes, I realize it’s a coincidence. 35 million people or so live in Canada. Obviously, there would have to be someone, at least one other person in the entire country, who would share the same date of birth as my dad. There’s about 20 years between this woman and my dad. Which makes her only 10 years older than me.
It was just a little surprising that this woman, this random woman who I would probably not have given a second glance to had she already been up on the sidewalk, not only shares her birthday with my dad, but is also an adoptee.
She didn’t believe our meeting was coincidental and that she was meant to meet me that night. She offered me a prayer in Ojibway, which I appreciated.
We spoke for another minute or so. Well, she spoke and I let her say her piece. She was harmless, and clearly just needed a friendly ear for a minute.
Eventually — a minute or so later, I told her that we’d had a very long day at work, and needed to get home. She was appreciative for my help getting her off the road, and thanked me again, in Ojibway.
And I think, if I do happen across her again, I might buy her that cup of coffee I still feel badly that I didn’t initially offer her.
