Sunday Morning

I drove up to the casino in the early morning through a light rainy mist. It was the same time my husband and I used to go to church, but when our innovative, ex Vietnam-vet pastor retired, the one who replaced him was traditional and the services were back to an old familiar monotony, so we discontinued going. Besides that, I’d started to question a lot about church and everything religious I’d been taught growing up, and I couldn’t shake it. I didn’t really want to.

So this morning, I wanted to do something that I knew from experience was fun, and besides, it would give me a chance to crank up the music on the drive up to Sonora. The March rains had made the green hills and trees pop up almost overnight, like a swimmer bursting up through the surface for air. Yet in the distance, I could see snow still on the tops of the mountains. The contrast was startling and made me notice the how beautiful the world can be.

Listening to Jackson Browne sing “in the morning light streaming in, I get up and do it again, Amen,” the turns of the car matched the rhythm of the music as I weaved my way up the windy road ahead of me. My mind was free, abandoning itself to whatever thought came in before it was quickly replaced by another one. The freedom of the road and in my head made me feel ten pounds lighter and ten years younger.

When I arrived at the casino, I folded into the familiar world of gaming sounds, lights and music. I liked to go when there were few people there. You didn’t have to interact with people if you didn’t want to and could almost disappear. I got my free cappuccino and $75 freeplay plus $300 of my own and, for the next two hours, proceeded to go through them all before I left. I didn’t really expect to win, since I rarely did. As I was walking out to my car, I wondered what it is about the place that draws me back. I felt some guilt, especially since it was Sunday morning, but not enough to swear I would never do it again. I left with three dollar bills in my wallet. At least, I still had the $40 bag of quarters I’d left in my car, untouched.

Heading back down the hill, the rain was starting to fall. Just outside Jamestown, I passed an old man sitting on the gravel shoulder of the road. Cars were whizzing by, but he looked like a little monk doing prayers. He had a long jacket with a hood and his head was bent down, almost as though he was trying to disappear. His white sheepdog was leaning into him, as close as he could get without being in his lap.

I was driving fast, and passed him in an eyeblink. But the image was engraved in my head, so after a few miles, I turned the car around and went back to where he still sat. I saw the hood move just a bit when I turned to park on the side of the road and he heard the scrunch of my tries in the gravel just behind him. I grabbed the bag of quarters from the console and put the three one-dollar bills from my wallet on top of the pile of coins. As I got out of the car and walked toward the old man, he slowly stood up and looked at me as the dog started wagging his tail. It was hard to tell his age. He wore the rough look of years living on the move, and could have been anywhere between 35 and 65. His front tooth had broken in half, his face was unshaven and the color of weak coffee. His frame was slight and bent, like a little Yoda. I could tell he was apprehensive about contact with people, but when I smiled at him and said “Good morning,” a smile started in his twinkling eyes and spread its way out to the rest of his face.

I held the bag of money out to him, and he said, “What is this?” I replied, “It’s for you. I thought you could use it.” He exclaimed, “My God, there must be twenty dollars worth of quarters in there!” I answered “Forty three to be exact.” I asked if I could pet his dog and he said, “Sure.” He kept on looking at the bag of money as if he didn’t know what to do with it, and I apologized for only having mostly quarters. He replied, “Well, it’s a little heavy, but not too heavy.” I never thought about weight being a big factor, but when you’re homeless, I guess it is. After a couple of minutes of petting the dog and him thanking me for the money, I said my goodbye to him and added a “God bless you.” I left him standing there in the light rain, watching him hold up the bag of money to look at it again.

As I started the drive home, I suddenly started crying, then sobbing, and I didn’t know why. A tremendous feeling that I guess was thankfulness or empathy welled up in me, a stirring of something almost forgotten. It occurred to me that I had the same feelings of isolation that the old man must have. Money doesn’t change that. It doesn’t automatically make all things better, but it can be a way to reconnect with people that the world has seemed to forgotten. Most of it I wasted on a casino, yet it took so little to have an old homeless man and his dog feed my soul. I wanted to treasure the memory of the encounter, so I kept on turning it over and over in my head, all the way home.

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