Oh, I Do

I remember feeling the familiar rise of that lump in my throat as he approached us. He came right over, stuck out his hand and asked if we had any change to spare. In my bravest eleven year old voice I told him "no, sorry" and took a step closer towards my big sister's side. It was the first time I had been out in the city alone with her, without the watchful gaze of our father and my mother, without the tension of their history between them and her, without my ignorance about love between her and me. It was the first time I had seen her as an adult, as a human being, as someone with a voice and opinion worth listening to. It was the first time I had depended on her to protect me.

I thought that we would keep walking. That's what I had been taught to do. That's what I would have done with any other adult who would have been by my side at the time. But instead my sister stayed where she was. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a dollar bill. "Oh, I do!" She exclaimed, as though one of our friends had asked us for change, as though there was nothing to fear. My sister had protected me. She had made me feel safe. That moment changed my life.

Twelve years later I am still searching my voice for the same inflection of kindness I discovered in hers that night. Twelve years later I am still repeating those three words "oh, I do" to anyone who asks me if I have something to give. Twelve years later I am still listening to her lesson echoing in my head. "I think it's so funny that people are afraid of him," she said as he followed us down to Cosi, singing us a song in appreciation. Twelve years later I am still laughing at the foolishness of such fear.

On Friday night we sat outside a bar in olde city called The Plough and the Stars. I mentioned how strange it felt to sit there for so long watching crowds of people pass without knowing a single one. I think he thought that I meant I wanted to recognize a face, but what I was really saying was "look! Look at all of this burning possibility. Look at all of these strangers that I have yet to befriend. Look at all of these souls that I have yet to fall in love with." What I was really saying was "we are all so astonishingly perfect."

I consider all of you who read this who I do not know in "the real world." I wonder if I would notice you if I passed you on the street. I think probably not. I think we all must look fairly ordinary, perhaps even boring, perhaps like every other face in the crowd. Here on these pages we radiate with light and ideas and love, but out in the world we wake and work and sleep like anyone else. We breathe just the same. We laugh and cry and feel just the same. We live day upon day just the same, with the knowledge that there will be a final day, a day we will be gone and the rest of the world will continue on, just the same.

And that's what I see when I look at a stranger. I see that sameness, that humanness, that idea that if I could access their thoughts I would see that they were not so very different from my own. Sometimes I think that if everyone I know had a blog I could read, we would all be better people for it. Sometimes I think that understanding one another is as simple as understanding how to share ourselves. Sometimes I think that we forget that we are all made of stars, astonishingly perfect, burning with possibility. There is so much potential for love.

And when you ask me if I truly believe that, if I truly ache with an optimistic hope for the world, if I truly throb with an unwavering faith in the goodness of people, my answer is always the same. "Oh, I do."

I have to.