There's a woman I see on the streets of Portland, Oregon, who moves me in a way that's sometimes embarrassing. After crossing paths with her, I've had to pull the car over to rearrange my emotions; she's made me late for appointments and forced me to end a run before it began. I don't know her name, but I speculate it's Alice or Anita or Lucy. I know she lives nearby, and is probably in her fifties, maybe even my mom's age. Her hair, auburn and wavy, is neither treated nor cut professionally. Her hands, clenched tight around the metal, look like my nana's, with gentle age spots and loose skin that has worked too hard for fifty-something years.

I don't see her in the same place, but she's always alone and oftentimes drenched in the inexorable Pacific Northwest rain that stops for no one, not even a woman on her way home from the Laundromat with her clean clothes still warm like chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven. I know that it's laundry in her bag and not cans of peas or liters of Coke, because I've seen her standing against the dryer, folding each sock and each knit top. The bag swings with each step, like a child in a hammock, as she skims the dirty sidewalks with the insides of her shoes.

Her pace is the same, whether she's on the sidewalk or in a crosswalk, always twice as slow as the city's calculated pace for people to cross the street. The "walk" sign vanishes and is replaced with the blinking "Don't walk" sign before she's even taken four steps, while the cars, growling like animals, exhaust carbon monoxide and their patience. But she keeps walking with one cane down and then another. She keeps walking, even in the face of danger and fear.

More than once, I've come upon her mid-crosswalk. The light has already turned green again and the cars, thank God, have seen her and wait until she makes it to the curb. You can see the driver's eyes shift from the radio or their cell to the woman, bent and purposeful, scooting toward her destination.

The first time I saw her, my running shoes couldn't tread fast enough to get in-between her and the cars idling behind the line. I positioned myself, awkwardly, with my arms up like a gate protecting her, the way old men do, if they were raised right, when they walk down the street with their wives. Don't think I'm a saint; you would have done it, too. I know this because I've seen other neighbors with their arms out and the same self-conscious smile, blocking her from harm, sure to wait until she gets both canes and both feet on the curb before waving the traffic on. I sat, in my car this time, and watched and wondered, through my suppressed sobs, if everyone is affected as violently as me.

She never looks up, only at the rubber capping the end of each cane. Her feet curl inward in such a way that I'm sure they've been sick for awhile, yet I'm equally sure there was a time when she could run and do cartwheels in the grass. The cane wraps around her wrists like Wonder Woman's bracelets as she scoots deliberately, knowing that after 5,000 lefts or 7,000 rights, she'll be home, to her studio apartment, where she knits and takes her medicine.

This woman ruins me every time fate brings her into my life, even if I look away immediately. I don't know why I see her as often as I do or why she makes it hard for me to breathe, but I trust there is a reason. After I see her, sunrises wake me up in the morning and I can smell the rain that dapples my windshield and curls my ponytail. The paint on the artist's canvas reveals the depth of the painter's stroke, and at the market, I'm led to the ingredients of my great-grandmother's homemade bread. I find time to visit a friend in the hospital, feel the warmth of my lover in the darkness, and inhale the delicate fragrance of an infant's skin.

Will I be her friend one day, helping her fold her laundry and making her life easier? Or will she just tenderize me from a far, making only my life easier? Will she continue to just remind me of tiny flowers, and the way my mom and dad smile when I get off a plane? Or of my nana's perfume, or the way my brother's toes look more like my dad's everyday? Or will Alice or Anita or Lucy forever be nothing more to me than the epitome of determination, burned like public humiliation or regrets in my mind, reminding me that while we are malleable and soft, nothing is insurmountable?

How can we not be inspired, even when our world is fragile, to keep walking?

By Gina Daggett © 2003

Published in Portland Tribune
— Cup of Comfort for Inspiration Anthology, September 2003