I made a young woman cry twice last evening, in part by doing my job well.

I felt cruel  but she understood the hard truth of my words.  She held the tears in her eyes as long as possible, sitting in a coffee shop with her hands held tensely in her lap.  I had delivered my message in soft tones on many other occasions. When her actions showed that I had not penetrated the fog, I steeled myself and came down with force.

I don’t know if she can or will change; but I know the quality of the fiber which runs through her, the merits of her soul, the charity in her breast.  She craves change; she’s just lost in a destructive grid.

I have hope.

Tears flowed a second time towards the end of our meeting; tears of grief; tears of sorrow; of release perhaps.  I put my arms around her; I wrapped her in encouragement, using the tenderest of tones learned from my mother, murmured to me as I cried each time failure cratered my dreams.

I glanced away so she could recompose herself.  I watched a man driving a Mercedes barrel through the intersection outside the coffee shop, cutting through oncoming traffic, halting parallel to the window facing in the wrong direction.  He ignored the blare of horns, the darted dirty looks.  A teenage girl hopped out of the vehicle and sashayed into the restaurant.  The driver, her father possibly, pulled away from the curb without heeding the cars coming towards him, causing those drivers to swerve and brake.  He sped off in the wake of their wrath and frustration.

I turned to my companion.  I guess the rich live different than you and me, I remarked.  I guess if you drive a fancy car, you can break the law.  She laughed through her tears.  The tension broke.  We rose and embraced, then she hurried off to work and I drove home, thinking, as I carefully steered the Prius into the rush hour traffic on 63rd street, that I am grateful every day.  I’m not rich; I’m not successful by the standards of the oblivious man in the sleek car driving wild through Brookside just because he feels entitled to do so.  But I’m surviving, and once in a while, I get something right.

It’s the ninth day of the twenty-seventh month of My Year Without Complaining.  Rain gently falls on my neighborhood, washing away the winter’s grime.  Life continues.