On my way home from work this afternoon I was crossing 13th street at 2nd avenue and I looked up to see a woman with her hair tightly pulled back coming towards me from the opposite corner. As she approached, I realized she was crossing herself, forehead, heart, left shoulder, right shoulder, and then she kissed her fingertips and flicked them into the wind towards 1st avenue. I thought it was strange, and considered that she might have OCD, or that she was in a state of intense emotional turmoil and was praying en route to wherever that turmoil was forcing her. But then I looked at the spot where she’d sent that kiss, and there a half-block down was a parked Beth Israel ambulance with its lights flashing white and red.
I’m not a religious person and the last time I crossed myself I was 14 years old, but suddenly I was seized with the undeniable urge to hug her. I wanted to hug her because I knew that she was sending whatever she personally considered to be good faith in the direction of a stranger who was ailing. She didn’t know who was in the ambulance–if anyone even was in the ambulance–but that didn’t matter to her. The facts were irrelevant because sending that kind of goodness is never a bad thing, even if there is no one to receive it on the other end.
Small kindnesses like hers go generally unacknowledged in a city where it’s not unusual to be unable to hear your own voice. Smallness in New York is relegated to certain realms: to apartment floor plans, body weight, expensive meal portions and subway cars. Everything else here is big; the personalities, the noise, the energy are all impossible to contain. Bigness reigns on an island as tiny as a seashell. Pull the shell to your ear and you can feel the sound of rattling garbage trucks and squealing children reverberate against your skull.
As I crossed the street I watched her gaze drop to the ground as she passed me. She seemed embarrassed by what she had done, and it was this shame I found most moving. Even to a religious person, goodness in this city can frequently seem the enemy. I regret not stopping her to gently touch the part of her shoulders where her fingers had just grazed. I regret not smiling and saying, “Your goodness inspires me.” If I had, she probably would’ve shaken me off and hustled away, perhaps turning back quickly to glimpse again the strange girl who tried to connect with her in the middle of East 13th street.