Flowers Grow In The City

Batty Hattie, they call her, as she waits in line for the hot food from our soup van’s serving window. “Crazy as a loon …..and a thief too” that’s’ what they say about her to our workers who nightly visit the streets of the city.

She wears dated but dressy, church hats, from the thrift shop. The kind you see on older black matriarchs as they go to Ebenezer Baptist on Sunday….Except these have street dirt and years of dust layered on the felt and satin ribbon. Along with her tattered man’s sport coat, (“big pockets”), they form her street clothes ensemble.

“Gave up her own children, so she could walk around the streets talking to herself and screaming at the passing cars” the street wise said, “Don’t mess wit her” “she’ll cut you soon as look at you” they warned us when she first started coming around .“Threw her out of the psycho ward for threatening the Dr’s”.

“Where do you sleep?”, one of our staff ask her when she didn’t’ list an address on the meal sheet. No answer,….. just the vacant stare of one who is somewhere else…….. Somewhere you can’t touch her with your words.

One night getting her helping of rice, stew and vegetables, gravy splashed onto her hand…. Volunteer Carol quickly took her hand and gently wiped the warm gravy from her knuckles and wrist , their eyes met…..and somewhere, from that distant place, eyes lit with the warmth of a human touch ………………. “Thank You”,… spoke a soft quiet voice that none of us had ever heard from Hattie…. Wise beyond her 28 years, Carol smiled and said, “You’re very welcome, Hattie”,…..Can we sit down and just talk?”.

That’s how we got to actually see Hattie’s place….. in the midst of cracked cement walks and the mud lawns of the projects, that hadn’t seen grass in years….. there was a somewhat still-slightly-white, little piece of dollar store fence that bordered a tiny garden….no food growing, (it wouldn’t last till it was ripe in that neighborhood), ..… just flowers crowded between the building wall and the cement curb of the dumpster.

Nothing you’d see at the Home and Garden Expo, No their beauty far exceeds pampered, sheltered “miracle grow” blossoms; for they reflect the beauty of a soul that, though hidden, will not die, and somehow still clings to memories of beauty.

I wish I could tell you that Hattie has turned her life around, become an upstanding citizen , a “success” story. But I cannot, …. In a crowd, she still gets the little “right of way path” of a “crazy woman”. Still dines, sidewalk café , at the Army van.

But she has found a place, where she can sit down for a few moments, let the wildness fade from her eyes and talk to another human being. She lets us touch, gently; the soul that still lives deep inside, nourished by a small patch of beauty next to a dumpster.

We pray that the seeds of serving , sown in the form of Christ-like love, will blossom someday into a new creation in her life. Until then….we talk, pray, and serve meat gravy over rice…..in faith.