It was four days before Christmas on H Street Northeast in a section of Washington DC that clings to the northern edge of Capitol Hill and is known to locals just as "H Street," nothing more. Tired buildings lean broken and vacant among their rebuilt and freshly-painted peers as revitalization has come to this long-downtrodden part of town, and this economic momentum has brought with it people like me who work in the businesses that now pepper the formerly-quiet neighborhood.
This day a man stood in the bright sunshine on the sidewalk in front of the bar I manage, gesturing somewhat wildly to someone (real or imagined I did not know); this is not in its own right anything of note, as the homeless wander the streets pretty regularly in this city and the regulars on H Street are among the most flamboyant. Wild gesticulations are hardly worth a second glance in a world where folks have conversations with lampposts and shout poetry on the corner to imaginary audiences.
Something about this presumably-homeless man caught my eye, though. Perhaps it was just the way he stood or the expression on his face, but I walked to the window for a closer look. Maybe in his mid-thirties, he was unshaven and clearly drunk as he was having a hard time standing without swaying. His face was intense as an undercurrent of anger seemed to flow through his eyes. His clothes looked old and second hand, but the ill-fitting sport coat over his shirt seemed to suggest he wanted to look cleaned up. And, under each of his tired, dirty arms, was a child.
A boy of maybe 4 and a girl of perhaps 6 or so stood by him, his dirty hands resting on the clean shoulders of their new clothes as they looked into the lens of a camera trying to capture the perfect moment, the pressure of which was obvious on the man's face. Perhaps it was his one chance to offer these kids proof positive for the future that he had been there, if only that day. A memory for a lifetime.
In what feels like an ever-more callous society I would challenge you, you who have never been close enough to touch a child whose normal could be this, a child whose smile could ring so hollow on the heels of Christmas: while you are counting the piles of gifts under your tree, chastising a spouse for forgetting the batteries for that special toy, bagging your mountains of trash and carelessly ripping open your bounty, I challenge you to look in your hearts, and to see our obligation to change the path for children like this and to have compassion for the adults that too many of them become.
When, in 30 years, these little children become this broken man because we did nothing, I will ask you -- as you scream about their entitlement mentality and their babies on welfare -- I will ask you what you did to help, because I cannot believe that the thinking among us can blame that little boy or that little girl for the future that was lain so crudely at their feet.
