The begging woman

     I had gone into a grocery store in Woburn, Mass. to buy flowers for a friend. Leaving, I walked through the automatic doors just behind another shopper pushing her full grocery cart.
     A woman standing outside near the entrance turned to us both. She was slim, maybe 50, with lank hair and a distraught expression, her mouth set in a small grim line, like a hyphen.
     “Can you spare…” she began, but the other shopper pushed past, as I normally do, shaking her head “no” vigorously.
     I headed for my car but something made me turn back. The woman was crying.
     I went over. “What did you ask?” I said.
     “I asked if you could spare some money for food,” she said, the tears still spilling.
     So I did something I’ve never done before.  I said yes, and reached into my purse. I had $30 that was supposed to last until my next paycheck in two weeks. I gave her $10.
     “I’m sorry it’s not more,” I said.
     She thanked me, saying I had no idea what this meant to her and went into the store.
     I know, I know, what so many of us think. She’s just going to use it for drugs or alcohol. She should get a job and earn her keep like the rest of us.
     But I know what it’s like to lose a job. And if she used it to buy a bottle of wine, well, that might easily be what I would have used it for, too. I truly don’t care what she did with it. I just felt better having done it.
     What I wish now is that I had said, “Get a grocery cart,” then gone with her through the store as she filled it with items she – or maybe she and her family – needed, before paying for it.
     And I should have given her the flowers.