An Ode To The Sassy Black Lady
I saw something today that warmed my heart.
As much as I like to think my city is accessible to people with handicaps, there are swaths of the city where the sidewalks look like they belong in post-war Berlin. Cracks, holes, missing chunks and often, just a stray block or two, or three, or four where there is no sidewalk at all. The sidewalk will just end and turns into a dirt or mud path wandering along next to the road. It is pretty shameful how the poorer parts of town don't even have proper sidewalks.
It is treacherous going if you are handicapped, old, have bad ankles or thin shoes.
It has been real hot here lately. Hotter than usual and the people have been really feeling it. I got stuck in traffic just a block from where I work. And as I sat there, annoyed, in my hot car, an elderly man in a walker passed by my car. He wasn't feisty-old, he was rickety old. He was clinging to his walker and I could see that he was pretty unstable on his feet. He was about ten feet from hitting a patch of sidewalk that was crumbling into chunks of loose paving, gravel and patches that hadn't fallen apart yet. Rough terrain for a very old man tottering clumsily and off-balance.
I was stuck in my car and there was no parking or helping. He hit a rock and almost fell. Stumbled. Stayed up. Kept going.
And around the corner came the Sassy Black Lady. I saw her feet first. Bright Pink, high-HIGH heeled stilettos that you'd think only an acrobat could balance on and tight black and leopard print leggings. Those pants were so tight they might as well have been painted on. She had a tight pink top and a rounded figure that filled everything out quite nicely. She had loooong pink nails and big bouncy gold jewlery. Her make-up was flawless and a bit heavy, fake eyelashes and a big old hairdo with a pink scarf woven into it. Not quite a beehive but pretty danged bigl. She was gorgeous-tall and muscular--but not a thin lady. She was curvy and...well, she was just damned sassy!
And she was gliding on those high-HIGH heeled shoes across that broken up sidewalk like she was Miss Universe on a runway.
This is a drab part of town, old buildings with peeling paint, crap sidewalks, closed businesses. And this one woman, like a single splash of color on a grey canvas.
And she sailed right by the little old man who was just hitting the worst patch of pavement. She didn't even look at him. And about two steps later she just stopped dead in her tracks, spun around on those shoes (I think my ankles would have both snapped if I had tried that move) and she marched right up to that old man and gently took his elbow. I couldn't hear her but she was talking to him as she guided him over a hole. My car creeped forward and she continued to guide him at this slow little snail pace.
It was really beautiful. To see this woman who was tromping along, with places to go, and holes to glide over, suddenly spin around, and then turn into this patient, slow-moving angel. She walked him to the corner and he was thanking her ever-so-much. He gestured to the bus stop another 30 feet down the road, and as my car crept forward she walked him all the way to the bus stop. She waved nicely, he was thanking her, I could tell. And then, Bam. That fast moving woman was back and she went strutting past my car window as I hit the corner and turned. She was just hitting the gravel and rocks as I saw her last, she just kept on strutting even though she was walking through rubble.
And I just grinned and smiled all the way home. That was one sassy Black Lady and one heck of a sweet angel.
(note: I don't mean to offend by using Black over African American. I have worked with families from Haiti, Jamaica, and several other places with accents I could never quite figure out. But, I learned that it is offensive to some when it is assumed they are African. (Are all redheads Irish Americans?) I feel the same way about using African American vs. Black but I do it out of respect, not ingorance).
