Some days, everything spins out of control

I grabbed my purse and keys and rushed out to make the after-school pickup. As usual the traffic was crazy. There isn’t any other word for it. Just crazy. Cars were speeding, darting in and out, racing from one destination to another. We were all busy people with places to go and things to do.

I found a spot to pull over in front of the school – no time to park – and my daughter jumped in. Then we took off to pick up her younger sister.

At a particularly busy intersection, I stopped to wait for a break in the traffic. When it came, I would have to make a run for it.

Looking first to my left, then to my right, I noticed an older man standing at the corner. He was bent from the waist, clinging to a signpost, his forehead pressed against the cool metal. He face was ashen. His eyes were closed. He looked sick.

My daughter noticed him and then looked at me. The expression on her face reminded me of the way my children looked when they were younger and ran up to me with an injured bird or broken butterfly in their hands, expecting me to make things better.

A woman on the sidewalk saw the man too, and she walked up to him and put her face close to his. She put her hand on his back, and moved it in small, slow, circles. It was an unconscious gesture, tender and comforting.

I called out to her, asking if there was anything I could do, if they needed any help, and she turned to me.

“I think we’re OK,” she said, smiling briefly, and then turned back to the man.

I hesitated for another beat, and then pulled into traffic and drove away. Immediately, cars filled the gap between us and the corner where they stood.

The man looked to be somewhere in his 70s, maybe older. Maybe younger.

I don’t know if he was sick, or having a bad reaction to some medication. I don’t know if he was just winded after hurrying across the street, a dangerous intersection with speeding cars hurtling down the steep hill into the city.

He might have been drunk, too intoxicated to walk and just clinging to the post to keep from falling. I don’t know. I guess it really doesn’t matter. I know he didn’t look good.

I’m not sick, or as old as the man, or three sheets to the wind, but there are days I feel like doing exactly what he was doing. Like grabbing onto the first stable thing I find and holding on for dear life.

Those are the days when it feels like I’ll be thrown off the planet and spun out into space if I let go of the things that anchor me. I want to close my eyes until the spinning stops.

The man on the corner was still on my mind when I picked up my younger daughter and took the girls home. The house was cool and quiet and we all stopped in the kitchen for something to eat and drink. Leaning against the sink, I listened as they talked about their day.

My feet were on solid ground.

I’d like to think the man is OK, that he made it home. I’d like to think he woke up the next morning, put his feet on the floor and stood up straight.

If he was sick, I hope he’s feeling better. If he was gasping for air and scared, I hope he caught his breath. If he was drunk, I hope he sobered up; that he remembers the woman who put her hand on his back.

I hope the world slowed down long enough to let him get back on.