A Mother's Heart

I don't like this.

There is a new phenomenon of able-bodied blue-collar guys wandering aimlessly the streets of Portland.

One sits in a small car crammed with stuff, with eyes that do not want to be seen. It is not hard to guess what happened to him.

Another, at the bus stop, asks me if I have a quarter. I do actually not have a quarter. What I do have is a cranky child pulling at my chest, and two hands full of stuff. A chill wind is blowing. Rain is coming. I am exhausted.

Experienced panhandlers do not bother women in my predicament. I blow him off. And I feel terrible.

Today I hauled the baby around our neighborhood for a walk in the sunshine. Here, in one of the most desirable areas of one of the most robust housing markets in the country, there were too many For Sale signs.

I came home to find a realtor trying to gain entrance to our building. Our neighbor below us, who we thought had sold her condo, had the sale fall through. The bank foreclosed last night. Washington Mutual. So they are trying to figure out how to list the property, without having the keys, or any sense of what they now own.

I help the realtor, sort of.

I wish I was kinder to those in need. I have seen so many scams, and I didn't have a quarter. But I do have a heart, and I could've done something other than slamming it shut.

The baby opens my heart, and saves me from worrying too much about the economy. He is doing an incredible amount of growing, physically and mentally. The thirst for becoming is so obvious in him. When he was two months old, you could sense the hugeness of his desire to move across the floor. Now, at seven months, he yearns to stand, to climb, to explore. One person's "exploration" is another person's "getting into things." Outside of our names and opinions, the baby does what he does. And the world does what it does. Fortunes rise and fall because we experience them as fortunes.

From the baby's point of view, as long as he has his parents, he's happy. He really doesn't need much. Lately, something called "small-object fascination" ensures he will spend twenty minutes trying to pick up a cereal flake. Pop him in his new Bumbo chair, give him two flakes of cereal, and he's occupied for quite a while.

We will get through this. Humans have survived much worse; right now, in other places, people are meeting far greater difficulties. My wish would be for the open heart of the mother to depersonalize enough to encompass the world.

Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings;
Radiating kindness over the entire world:
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.....