Springing Forward

Every year, for as long as I can remember, I have handed over a small wad of cash so I can fill out something called a bracket. My head spins as I randomly put my faith in one college basketball team over another, mildly excited when I recognize a team I can support on principle -- i.e. somebody I care about went there, or, with apologies to close friends who are Duke alums, UNC. Can't help it; I just love robins egg blue.

This is a big week for harbingers of spring. March Madness brackets are in. The Chicago River goes from puke green to kelly green for St. Patrick's Day. It's the Ides of March, a date so often marked by tragedy -- Julius Caesar, stabbed, 44 B.C.; Ed Sullivan Show, cancelled, 1971.  Super Tuesday, part two. Daylight Savings Time makes it a little harder to get out of bed, harder still to leap into your sweats the minute you get home and hunker down for the evening under a blanket on the couch while you binge watch TV and shovel in comfort food. Not impossible, but still harder, with the sun still so high in the sky.

It's been about five months since I've seen our neighborhood homeless woman, the woman who, at a quick glance, seems just like the rest of us but who, upon closer study, seems not like us at all. The "us" being a pretty varied and motley band of neighbors who may have nothing in common except for the fact that we are not homeless.

She stood at a safe distance from my parked car the other day, so still I barely even noticed her as I juggled my coffee and my laptop and my keys. I felt her eyes on me, looked up. "Hi!" I smiled, greeted her as I would greet an old friend, well except for the part about not moving closer. She let me off the hook, told me she had a really bad cold, as if she really thought I had any intention of closing the gap. I was relieved. By my estimate she was wearing about six layers of outfits, and the layer on the outside looked coated with dust.

"How's Eli," she asked me. The last time I saw her, Eli was sporting a lampshade so he wouldn't lick his phantom testicles, and she had expressed some despair at the idea of Eli's charms stopping with Eli, never getting passed down. My male friends had, for the most part, crossed their legs in empathy, astonishingly tuned in to Eli's discomfort. The homeless woman had taken a broader, more long term view. Lost potential, a bleaker future, limited possibilities. Something she knew a lot about, this woman who was once a girl with a life full of potential and unlimited possibilities and a bright future.

She had spent the last five months living in a shelter, technically less homeless, I suppose. And now, with Daylight Savings Time and March Madness and green rivers upon us, she is back in the neighborhood. Her body doubles as her closet and her suitcase, the sky is her ceiling. And the other folks in the neighborhood will talk to her, at a safe distance.

She told me a little bit about the shelter, how viruses spread like wildfire there.  She didn't call it the shelter; she called it her community. Her community. As opposed to my community, the one she visits for seven months out of the year. Yet she seems content. Content and very much at home.

When she and Eli again cross paths, he will wag his tail and lick her face.  His greeting will be joyous and genuine, unlike my immobilized "hi." In Eli's world, there are no brackets. No playing favorites because someone's wearing robins egg blue, or smells nice. Anything is possible. He will close the gap.