Jones Car

Rachelle has run into the store to pick up a few groceries while Jones and I wait outside in the car.

Me in the front, he in the back.

Jones has figured out how to operate the power windows and this gives him no end of amusement. Cool, grey wind blows in through the open window, and people walk swiftly past, hands in pockets. Everybody in a big city kind of trance. Locked into a zone where anything other than the self is an obstacle to be avoided.

It’s easy to hate this on a day that promises winter. To be exhausted by it. To just want to move away from the city and live amidst trees.

But Jones doesn’t mind all the averted eyes, at all. When he sees somebody coming down the sidewalk he powers down his window and shouts out to them, “Hi! Hi! Hello there!!” Each person is startled at first. They glance over at the car and see me, a middle-aged man on oxygen, and start to look away– all feeling a little bit more uncomfortable now than just a second ago. And then they see Jones. His sunny, smiling face. His little hand waving out the window, his happy optimism, and their faces relax. They start to smile, then laugh. He must do this to a half dozen people, maybe a dozen. The same result each time. Each time, a little spark ignited within.

Each person now carrying this into their journey.

The strangers continue down the street, like illuminated ghosts now, or a line of lanterns growing dim in the distance. Each one of us slightly different, as if wind-blown, as if the spirit of something small and beautiful had just passed through us.