The Poignancy of It All

The other day I was touched by several encounters.  First, I had just arrived at my spot in Suburban Station and I was beginning to unpack my ax and a woman came up to me and handed me a dollar.  Just because.  I smiled and said, "But I haven't even started playing..." and she said, "That's o.k.  That's o.k."  She smiled and walked away.  Two minutes later a young African-American woman walked over to me and said, "Mr. David Reichenbacher?"  I said, "Yes, you must be from Rhodes Middle School" where I taught for fifteen years in the heart of North Philadelphia.  She told me how she had been active in my peer mediation program.  I vaguely remembered her name and face, but to tell you the truth, fifteen years really changes people's appearances, especially  between the ages of ten and twenty-five.  Then she smiled, and I remembered her eyes.  Yes, the eyes.  She told me how she loved the program and how everyone loved me.  Well, I'm not sure that was true, but it surely was comforting to hear.  And sometimes we tend to remember only the positive things or even rewrite history, and that can be a good thing, especially if there was a lot of negative.  Which there was.  In North Philly.  But there was a lot of good, too.  And I'm glad she and I could celebrate that for a moment at least.  Thank you, Sweetheart, for that moment.
And then a few minutes later a young man in a worn army jacket, obviously drunk, but harmless, stood before me, listening to my song, rocking slightly to the rhythm.  At the end of the song, he said, "I have five dollars.  Play me something happy, and I'll take four back.  Would you do that for a veteran?"  I said, "Of course."  I played him "Hear Comes the Sun" by George Harrison.  He loved it.  "Play me another, and I'll give you another dollar."  So I played him an original, and he loved that, too.  He told me his wife was in jail, and she was about to be released.  And that he could sing and he was a writer.  I asked him what he wrote, and he stood there, looking off into the distance.  "Hold it, wait a minute, I'll see if I can remember..."  He stood there, staring...  I started playing softly, background music to his thinking.... "No, wait minute, I think I got it."  Then he broke into a blues rap, obviously original.  Full of pain and soul.  When he finished, he handed me the five spot and I gave him three back, and he smiled and hurried off down the hall, blending into the crowd.
I thank the woman who gave me a dollar on faith, the young former student who expressed her warm memories, and the vet who was struggling to make sense of this world.
Such blessings.