the warmth of Christmas
Now time to write this. The other day, on the way home from a friend's going-away party, my Secret Agent Lover man and I were driving along the overpass portion of the Gardiner Expressway, one of Toronto's major city highways, in the dark and snow. We were looking forward to getting home, making dinner (I had been promised smoked tofu in a red miso sauce), loving on the dog, and finishing the day well (yes, that is a euphemism) when we... saw something. It took a minute to register:
"is that...?"
"oh, shit!"
"I'm-"
"Yeh, of course."
The odd shape - a person? two people? what were people doing by the side of a freezing cold highway with no shoulder? What were they bending over? Is that a bumper of a car? - resolved into two people, a man and a woman, standing over a massive pile of luggage. My SALM pulled over and I got out, ran back into the wind, and asked what was going on.
The guy told me they'd grabbed a cab at the bus station and asked to be taken to a motel, any motel. They'd just arrived in Canada, and had a flight to Vancouver the next day, and we later pieced it together that they must have taken the bus up from somewhere to get over the border before the passport requirements even for land travel kicked in. So they asked the cabbie for a motel, something not too expensive, and he loaded them and all their stuff up, drove off into the night, and then demanded $80 cash for the ride. Luggage surcharge, he said, plus a long trip. When they protested that they didn't have that kind of money, he pulled the cab over in the seven-below weather on a stretch of highway where every year people get killed on the side of the road, where you are exhorted to drive your flat off to the next exit rather than stop, and dumped them and all their stuff into a snowbank. And drove off. When we arrived, they were literally standing in the snowbank, luggage in a heap around them, while eighteen-wheelers sped by at 120kph spraying slush off their second wheels and honking, uselessly.
We urged them to please, get into the car; told them how unsafe it was there. We said we'd let them wait in the car and call them a cab, that we wouldn't abandon their luggage but to please come in out of the weather. They did, and my SALM and I both got on our mobile phones, him to a cab company and me to the cops, then we traded when we discovered no cab company would send someone to stop there. Not there. The cops sent two cars, and we waited and blasted the heat while the woman cried in the back and her partner held her hand and murmured to her in calming Spanish and let her cry from how scary it had been. She couldn't even look at us, two white guys, both bigger than her partner, in a beat-up Subaru covered in library books and dog hair. I think she thought he was crazy, trusting us, but we were their only option. No one else stopped (except some schmuck in a towncar, just before the police arrived, to berate us about being there with all our luggage in the road; someone who I hope gets nailed by the karmic boomerang sooner rather than later for that one).
My Secret Agent Lover Man, calm and seasoned at dealing with the Toronto cops, asked for a Spanish-speaker to be dispatched, asked for them to please hurry because of the dangerous location, explained carefully that we would have been glad to drive them wherever they wanted to go but couldn't even begin to fit all their luggage in the car. The dispatcher said yes, they'd had a huge flurry of calls about these people, and they would send someone immediately. We had them in our car, she clarified? Yes, he responded, we'd taken them in.
When the cops finally came, they were young and efficient and I explained our involvement in the whole thing to the white woman while the Latino guy had an urgent conference with our backseat passengers. All parties concurred that we had to get off the highway, and soon. I carried luggage to the cops' vehicles, loaded their huge cheap suitcases into the backseats. When there was discussion about how the hell all of it would fit even in two backseats (the trunks being full of cones and first-aid kits and what-have-you) we said we'd take the two of them, if they'd take the stuff. We negotiated with the cops not to put them into another cab at the next exit but instead to caravan them to a nearby motel, relatively cheap and right on the highway, one of the cheapest cab rides to the airport in the nearby area.
After dropping them off, loading out their stuff - his guitar in a gig bag heartbreakingly damp from sitting in the snow, some of the luggage literally splitting its seams - the cop asked for our names and numbers in case we needed to swear out a statement against the cabdriver, and we gave them. She told us that they already knew who it was, people had started calling in as he was kicking them out of the cab and they'd found him, fast. "But no one stopped!?" I asked, incredulous. She shook her head, and made a comment about how good it was to see that some people still understood the meaning of Christmastime.
"We're Jewish." I said, not unkindly. She fumbled, and recovered "Right, and you celebrate, uh, Han, uh, Chanukah?" which sounded more like handkerchief in her mouth than I've ever heard it do. I nodded, and corrected her gently, but that's not what I was saying.
I was too tired and frustrated and angry at the invisible cabdriver, too cold and rushed and worried about the dog to say what I wanted to say. "We're Jewish," was shorthand for "this is more complicated than that."
If I were warmed and had to pee less, I would have done better. I would have explained properly; more compassionately. I wanted to say: "We would have done this anyday. This is not about Christmas, it's about being people of faith. Any person of faith would have done it any day whether they celebrate Christmas or Yule or Eid or Chanukah or no winter holiday at all; whether they believe in one god or a few or their faith resides in the family of humanity or the energy of the natural world or a really perfect souffle. I'm glad you know it's Chanukah for Jews but frankly if we have a holiday spirit it's closer to one of our other holidays you can't pronounce; one of the non-giftgiving ones, but that isn't the point here.
"The key point is that everyone is still alive and the cabbie who thought he could get away with this because he had two brown passengers with spotty English is going to pay like he *^%$#@! well should, and she's finally stopped crying and has looked at us for the first time, holding hands in the cold wind like she's holding hands with her sweetheart and who knows what that may someday turn into. And the guitar is probably even going to be okay. Someone helped, and if it's about religion in any way it's probably about the fact that Jews know firsthand what happens when everyone looks but nobody helps, so thank you very much for not giving credit to Christmas for everything good, or for that matter blaming Islam for everything bad, or otherwise tagging any whole wilderness on the actions of a couple of its fat and fuzzy inhabitants, even in the snow."
"is that...?"
"oh, shit!"
"I'm-"
"Yeh, of course."
The odd shape - a person? two people? what were people doing by the side of a freezing cold highway with no shoulder? What were they bending over? Is that a bumper of a car? - resolved into two people, a man and a woman, standing over a massive pile of luggage. My SALM pulled over and I got out, ran back into the wind, and asked what was going on.
The guy told me they'd grabbed a cab at the bus station and asked to be taken to a motel, any motel. They'd just arrived in Canada, and had a flight to Vancouver the next day, and we later pieced it together that they must have taken the bus up from somewhere to get over the border before the passport requirements even for land travel kicked in. So they asked the cabbie for a motel, something not too expensive, and he loaded them and all their stuff up, drove off into the night, and then demanded $80 cash for the ride. Luggage surcharge, he said, plus a long trip. When they protested that they didn't have that kind of money, he pulled the cab over in the seven-below weather on a stretch of highway where every year people get killed on the side of the road, where you are exhorted to drive your flat off to the next exit rather than stop, and dumped them and all their stuff into a snowbank. And drove off. When we arrived, they were literally standing in the snowbank, luggage in a heap around them, while eighteen-wheelers sped by at 120kph spraying slush off their second wheels and honking, uselessly.
We urged them to please, get into the car; told them how unsafe it was there. We said we'd let them wait in the car and call them a cab, that we wouldn't abandon their luggage but to please come in out of the weather. They did, and my SALM and I both got on our mobile phones, him to a cab company and me to the cops, then we traded when we discovered no cab company would send someone to stop there. Not there. The cops sent two cars, and we waited and blasted the heat while the woman cried in the back and her partner held her hand and murmured to her in calming Spanish and let her cry from how scary it had been. She couldn't even look at us, two white guys, both bigger than her partner, in a beat-up Subaru covered in library books and dog hair. I think she thought he was crazy, trusting us, but we were their only option. No one else stopped (except some schmuck in a towncar, just before the police arrived, to berate us about being there with all our luggage in the road; someone who I hope gets nailed by the karmic boomerang sooner rather than later for that one).
My Secret Agent Lover Man, calm and seasoned at dealing with the Toronto cops, asked for a Spanish-speaker to be dispatched, asked for them to please hurry because of the dangerous location, explained carefully that we would have been glad to drive them wherever they wanted to go but couldn't even begin to fit all their luggage in the car. The dispatcher said yes, they'd had a huge flurry of calls about these people, and they would send someone immediately. We had them in our car, she clarified? Yes, he responded, we'd taken them in.
When the cops finally came, they were young and efficient and I explained our involvement in the whole thing to the white woman while the Latino guy had an urgent conference with our backseat passengers. All parties concurred that we had to get off the highway, and soon. I carried luggage to the cops' vehicles, loaded their huge cheap suitcases into the backseats. When there was discussion about how the hell all of it would fit even in two backseats (the trunks being full of cones and first-aid kits and what-have-you) we said we'd take the two of them, if they'd take the stuff. We negotiated with the cops not to put them into another cab at the next exit but instead to caravan them to a nearby motel, relatively cheap and right on the highway, one of the cheapest cab rides to the airport in the nearby area.
After dropping them off, loading out their stuff - his guitar in a gig bag heartbreakingly damp from sitting in the snow, some of the luggage literally splitting its seams - the cop asked for our names and numbers in case we needed to swear out a statement against the cabdriver, and we gave them. She told us that they already knew who it was, people had started calling in as he was kicking them out of the cab and they'd found him, fast. "But no one stopped!?" I asked, incredulous. She shook her head, and made a comment about how good it was to see that some people still understood the meaning of Christmastime.
"We're Jewish." I said, not unkindly. She fumbled, and recovered "Right, and you celebrate, uh, Han, uh, Chanukah?" which sounded more like handkerchief in her mouth than I've ever heard it do. I nodded, and corrected her gently, but that's not what I was saying.
I was too tired and frustrated and angry at the invisible cabdriver, too cold and rushed and worried about the dog to say what I wanted to say. "We're Jewish," was shorthand for "this is more complicated than that."
If I were warmed and had to pee less, I would have done better. I would have explained properly; more compassionately. I wanted to say: "We would have done this anyday. This is not about Christmas, it's about being people of faith. Any person of faith would have done it any day whether they celebrate Christmas or Yule or Eid or Chanukah or no winter holiday at all; whether they believe in one god or a few or their faith resides in the family of humanity or the energy of the natural world or a really perfect souffle. I'm glad you know it's Chanukah for Jews but frankly if we have a holiday spirit it's closer to one of our other holidays you can't pronounce; one of the non-giftgiving ones, but that isn't the point here.
"The key point is that everyone is still alive and the cabbie who thought he could get away with this because he had two brown passengers with spotty English is going to pay like he *^%$#@! well should, and she's finally stopped crying and has looked at us for the first time, holding hands in the cold wind like she's holding hands with her sweetheart and who knows what that may someday turn into. And the guitar is probably even going to be okay. Someone helped, and if it's about religion in any way it's probably about the fact that Jews know firsthand what happens when everyone looks but nobody helps, so thank you very much for not giving credit to Christmas for everything good, or for that matter blaming Islam for everything bad, or otherwise tagging any whole wilderness on the actions of a couple of its fat and fuzzy inhabitants, even in the snow."