The Wait
For the past five years I’ve been worried about a stranger. On any given day during the warm months in Chicago you can find him on a bench at the busiest entrance to Millennium Park with two huge suitcases — the kind you’d check, not carry-on. It looks like he’s waiting for a cab to take him to the airport. The bags are faded to a dusty gray, having spent years in direct sunlight all day.
I now recognize they likely hold his only possessions; a sober truth, one that took me awhile to grasp because of the look on his face. He smiles contentedly in the sun, hands folded across his chest, beaming like a person about to embark on the greatest vacation of his life.
I used to take my lunch in Millennium Park when my office was across the street, so I saw him daily. At first I feared he was in a kind of tragic denial. That his ride had failed to show up and never would, but he was returning to the agreed upon place day after day, year after in year, in hopes that “maybe today they’ll come.” A terrible loop. I wanted to say something, but it seemed cruel and pedantic to burst the bubble of someone so hopeful and expectant. He radiates a kind of childlike faith that contrasts sharply with the hordes of tourists taking breathless selfies by The Bean and corporate zombies shoveling Chipotle into their mouths, anxious about an afternoon meeting.
I’m worried about his skin. It’s burned to a leathery red, with cracked lips that seem to blend in with the rest of his face. There are benches in the shade he could select for his daily post, but no.
After several years of noticing him there, I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I stopped at a corner store and bought a bottle of water. Not that I thought this could assuage whatever difficult situation he’s in. I just couldn’t live with myself walking by every day and doing nothing. As I approached my heart fluttered, as if I had drummed up the courage to introduce myself to a celebrity.
“Hi, sir, I just wanted to give you this bottle of water.”
He smiled good-naturedly. “Oh, no, thank you, I have plenty of water.”
He sounded so confident that I believed him. Momentarily thrown, I faltered for a moment before setting it on the ground.
“Ok, I’ll just leave it right here next to you. I’m Tyler, by the way.”
He beamed. “I’m Mike.”
Of course, I thought. Michael. A name that means “one who is like God.” A non-anxious presence, appearing amid the privileged throngs as someone people might look away from. A startling mystery that is always there, impossible to understand or explain.
Over the years I’ve seen people stop and stare, or try not to. They give him their boxed up leftovers. Service dogs crane their necks toward him like phototropic trees leaning toward the sun. Everyone has a read on Michael. Some see tragedy, an inconvenient reminder of the socio-economics of our city. Others see an example of reality being stranger than any performance art.
But I think what actually stops people in their tracks, what makes them turn back and do a double take as they walk away is an unnerving resonance, a haunting familiarity. That perhaps we, too, feel out of place, left behind, caught in a loop. That everyone can see it, or no one can see it, and we’re telling ourselves and everyone else we’re fine. “I have plenty of water.” That here, of all places, in this global attraction so famous and manicured and glimmering, is someone whose ordeal externalizes how most of us feel inside: threadbare hopeful, burned, and waiting for God knows what.
