My "Gift of the Maji" Story...

It lacks the irony of the original, but it really happened and it's always stuck with me.

There is a story by O. Henry about a young, poverty-stricken couple extremely rich in love. It’s called “The Gift of the Maji,” a reference to the Three Wise Men who visited Jesus in the Manger bearing fabulous gifts. Alas, they bore no disposable diapers, baby formula, blankets or food. Instead, they came with room-freshener, currency or jewelry and combination room-freshener/perfume/beverage additive. With the exception of the gold, none of these gifts strike me as terribly wise, but whatever. And does anyone know what happened to the gold? Was Joseph able to use it to finance the purchase of a home for his new family? Luxury travel back to Nazareth from Bethlehem? New carpentry equipment? St. Matthew is notably silent on this.

Anyway, the O. Henry story is about love, and strength, and soldiering on through bad luck and poverty, and being incredibly smart about what you do have rather than what you don’t, all served with a giant dollop of irony which ends up tasting rich and sweet instead of bitter. I suggest you read it sometime. O. Henry’s writing style is dated. He’s a very heavy-handed narrator, but if you can shelve your completely-understandable 21st Century sense of snark, the payoff is good.

I should say at this point that my story isn’t as clever, but it really happened, and I’ve always felt so blessed by it. So, here goes.

I was visiting my sibling in New York for a few days before Christmas. We planned to join family friends in Virginia for the big day and a few days after that. I should add that I had migrated from New York to Los Angeles some years before, but I was a frequent visitor back East because my one sibling lives there, and I kept getting work that originated there.

This trip occurred during a prolonged period in which every trip to New York mysteriously but consistently coincided with some sort of dental emergency. We are talking exploding molars. Okay, I exaggerate. A molar wouldn’t explode, it would just crack catastrophically. At best, it would be uncomfortable and need shoring up. At worst, it would crack to the bone, resulting in an infection which would further expand half of my already-large face, and end with me in a gurney in a hallway overnight at Lenox Hill Hospital on a bag of IV antibiotics. Happy Holidays!

I’m pretty sure this was that trip. Anyway, it was a agreed that I should skip the trip to Virginia and just stay in New York, chill, get my dental issues resolved, and get better.

So that is what I did.

My sibling’s residence is very comfortable, there is a large television and lots of delivery menus. Actually, it’s obscenely comfortable. You couldn’t ask for a nicer place to recuperate.

There’s one thing about most Manhattan residences I’ve observed over the years. Rich, middle or poor, Manhattanites do not stock their kitchens like other Americans. Peek in in the fridge and there might be three cases of bottled water, a half-open package of string cheese, celery and an orange. The freezer might have eight selections of say, Lean Cuisine, ice and a slightly-crushed, half-eaten container of fully-crystallized, definitely-expired Vanilla Haagen Dazs.

The cabinet might contain an envelope of flavored instant Oatmeal, an open box of stale Water Crackers, a can of black beans, a can of crushed tomatoes and some Minute Rice.

It was Christmas Eve. It was late. I was alone, and I was jonesing for the one thing I have never been able to find anywhere else in the country or the world. New York Deli Fig Bars. Not Fig Newtons with their tender, cake-y outsides and their moist, melty insides. These Fig Bars are substantial. These Fig Bars are a man’s Fig Bar. The outside is deep brown verging on black. It’s coarse and chewy and it doesn’t crumble. It’s like Pepperidge Farm White Bread vs. Ezekiel Flourless Seven Sprouted Grains Bread. And the filling tastes like they grabbed a bunch of figs off the nearest tree, dried ‘em on a fire, and threw them into a pot with molasses and boiled them til they were the consistency of half-cooled road tar. Even if you take a sloppy bite, cracking some of the outside, that sticky, chewy inside will hold onto that conglomeration of wheat and who knows what else like rubber cement.

They are sublime. And I knew that with sufficient milk to soften them, and careful chewing, I could totally handle a bar or two, despite my bum tooth and my now-not-as-swollen face.

I should say that my resting place was on Madison Avenue in the Sixties (the street numbers, not the decade). If you’ve never been to New York, I can tell you that this is (or at least, was) a major shopping street. Every big-name, big price tag, designer had a store on Madison. It is seductive. I once found myself in Prada seriously contemplating the purchase of some black, nylon swim trunks for $300. A call from a friend back in LA yanked me back to reality. They were really cool swim trunks.

Which is to say, that while this stretch of Madison Avenue may be incredibly practical for the people who live there, I didn’t need anything from Hermes. It was closed, anyway. I needed a deli. And that deli was about five blocks south of where I was.

So, out onto Madison Avenue. It’s about 10 p.m. The stores are all closed and dark. There’s no one on the street. It’s cold, and the sidewalk has that thin coating of ice which occurs when it’s cold enough to snow, but doesn’t. I’m in sneakers, warm leather jeans, a very puffy parka, and a skull. I’m on a mission. I’m not paying attention to my surroundings at all.

Two blocks (or was it three?) down, there is one of those buildings with a recessed entrance. It is (or was) unlit, with wide stairs, and a front door protected by an overhang. It was dark, but it was the kind of dark you see at the back of a deep, floor cabinet in a well-let room when you’re looking for something. There’s light, but not nearly enough to be useful, and the room light only makes it appear darker. In this case, it was the storefronts on either side of the entrance, with their bright holiday displays that made the darkness seem more pronounced.

So I really wasn’t expecting to hear “Can you spare some change?”

I like to consider myself very relaxed in the urban environment. I spent my Twenties living in a tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and since then, I’ve lived in a variety of overpriced areas of varying degrees of sketchiness. I am used to living with the idea that existing these days involves accepting a certain level of random crazy, no matter how nice your hood.

But, at that moment, I was lost in thoughts of some sort and totally unprepared for human interaction of any kind, much less with someone I couldn’t make out.

So I jumped and blurted “Wha?” while my eyes adjusted to a large Black man sitting on the darkened steps of the building with the recessed entrance.

“I just want to get some food,” he said.

I have a few rules when it comes to panhandlers.

Actually, I only have one: If I have any dough, and someone asks me for some, I give ‘em a buck. Whatever they want to do with it is their business. Lecturing someone who has nothing about the perils of drink and drug accomplishes nothing. They know. They know better than you do. I know that because I am one of them and it’s only through sheer luck (or grace, if you prefer) that I’m not looking for spare change, or dead. If they want to talk, I’ll tell them about me if I think it might be useful to them. But no lectures.

I recovered myself. At the time, I was making nice money and some of it was in cash, in my wallet.

So I said, “Well, if you like, why don’t we go to the deli and you can pick out what you want to eat? On me.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

He heaved himself up off the stoop. He looked like a big guy, and he was young. The deli was a block-and-a-half away. I tried to make conversation.

“You keeping warm?”

“I’m alright.”

“What do you want to eat?”

“I think I’ll get baloney sandwich.”

“That’s it? C’mon. Don’t go crazy or anything, but this is on me. You should get exactly what you want. Like a sub, with cheese, and a drink and some snacks. Some chips.”

As we continued to chat, we missed the small, middle-aged blond lady ahead of us. We didn’t notice that her pace had quickened or that she had grabbed onto the door handle of the deli and slipped in really fast.

We missed that she was shaking really hard when we got inside and she headed for the back of the store.

The guys behind the counter knew me, but they started to give my friend a hard time. “Oh no! No. No. No!”

I told them to relax; he was my guest and to gzve him whatever he asked for and it was on me.

They gave me that pitying look that comfortable people often give when you stop to help someone “who doesn’t deserve it.” I don’t like that look. It’s smug and smug is probably my least favorite human quality. I get that these guys work really hard and bust their asses to keep their business and I respect that. But after 62 years, I know for a fact that no matter how hard you bust your ass, how smart you are, how talented you are, how little you start out with, if you look hard enough, you will see that somewhere, someone, or several someones in several somewheres did you a solid. Or, it was timing, or circumstantial. It might have been huge, it might have been tiny, but nobody does it all by themselves.

So, when we can, we pay it forward. I figure if I ever find myself in the same boat someday, I will be very busy trying to survive. The last thing I need is reason to kick myself for being an ass to people who were in that predicament. Why borrow trouble?

Anyway, my friend just went to town: A baloney sub with cheese, mustard, mayonnaise, no lettuce, no tomato, a bag of chips, a cola. Real player this one. I couldn’t help it. I teased him a bit. “Really going to town there, eh? How about we go crazy and get you a large bag of chips? Maybe two drinks? Maybe a piece of fruit?”

“I’m good,” he said.

“Okay.” I grabbed my Korean Deli fig bars, and one of those vitamin drink things and settled our tab.

He was outta the store in a flash and headed back up Madison to his spot, I assumed.

As I left the store, the petite blond lady was paying for her stuff. As I started walking north, I heard a female voice behind me.

It was her. “I’m so sorry I acted the way I did.”z

“How did you act? I missed it.z

“The way I ran in front of the both of you and ran into the store,” she replied.

“I didn’t notice to be honest.”

“Well, I did, and I’m sorry. I get spooked really easy these days.”

“Wellll,” I said. “It’s easy to get spooked, especially when the street is so empty.”

“It’s not that. I was attacked earlier this year, and it’s really left me on edge.”

“Well God, that’s completely understandable. You do what you need to do to feel safe, and don’t apologize for it. That happened to a friend of mine a few years ago and she could not be touched even casually for months after without completely freaking out.”

“It’s been tough” she said. “I had to leave work. Well, this is where I get off,” she said turning west at the corner. “You have a nice holiday.”

“You too. Take good care of yourself.”

I don’t find these kinds of interactions with strangers weird. They happen a lot. I’m flattered that people feel they can talk to me, especially if I can maybe lighten their load a little.

I kept walking. My friend was again sitting on the stairs in the recessed entrance. “Stay warm,” I said.

“Wait, I want to give you a present,” he said.

Seriously? I couldn’t think of anything more scandalous than accepting a gift from a homeless person. What an incredibly awful thing to do.

“Oh, man. That’s really nice, but I could never accept something from you.”

“I really want to.”z

“Are you sure?”

At this point, I should say I’m the guy the phrase “Read the room,” was coined for. I got a very late-in-life ADD diagnosis, which explains a lot, but even with awareness and work, there are still items on my list of Social Skills that don’t always deploy.

But this time, I got it. This guy who had nothing, nowhere good to go, nothing fun to do, wanted to participate in Christmas. And me continuing to refuse would be far more awful than accepting his gift.

So I shut up and just said “Thank you. That would be really nice.”

He reached into what appeared to be an Army duffel and pulled out a small packaged, wrapped in wrinkly Christmas wrapping, tied with a slender, red satin ribbon.

He handed it to me. “Here.”

I took it and pulled the wrapping off. Inside were two pairs of white, cotton-and-polyester blend athletic socks with navy toes and heels.

Who can’t use socks? “Thank you so much. You know, socks are always good.”

“I’m glad you like them. Merry Christmas. Thanks for the dinner. Stay warm, alright?”

“I’ll be fine.”

I never saw him again, but I’ve always hoped he was right, and things worked out for him. I still have the socks. I only wear them on important occasions. They’re a bit threadbare, but when I have a meeting or an obligation of some sort that I really want to go well, I wear them underneath a pair of dark dress socks.

I like to think they bring me good luck, but more than that, they remind me that grace and generosity aren’t dependent on one’s situation, they’re dependent on one’s character. I try to remember that. PM

`