No More Strangers in Suburbia

 

A Friday evening a few months ago, I was off to Wendy's to pick up a food order for the extended family. (Chrissy, Christian, Adella, and Dad.) As I was in line at the drive through, a woman knocked on my car window and asked how to get to the Hilton. She was on foot and had come to Wendy's for a cup of coffee, she said. I told her that I would give her a ride there. She refused, not wanting to put me out, so I gave her directions. Then I offered to drive her there again. She refused once more.

I got my food and then was winding back towards home on the road through the business parks parallel to Route 10. As I was driving, I saw the woman walking. I thought, "She is quite a ways from the Hilton and I am not sure she is really going to continue the right direction to get there. I should give her a ride."

But then I thought, "I already offered and she said no."

I drove passed her.

Then I thought of the conference talk by Sister Jean Stevens when she picked up the boy walking by the side of the road. Her simple act of kindness, one she had felt inspired to render, changed both her life and the boy's. I felt compelled to pick up this woman. How could I not stop.

So I flipped a U-turn (probably illegal) and drove back to where she was. I pulled up next to her and said, "I really feel like I should give you a ride."

My car was a mess. Embarrassed, I threw the papers on the passenger seat in the back and welcomed her into my car, apologizing for the chaos. She was a delightful, god-fearing woman. She talked about how things happened were for a reason. That perhaps we were meant to meet. Then she talked a bit about her family--she lived in Elizabeth with her husband and had a daughter down South with children who she visited frequently. I told her a bit about my family and my adorable grandchildren. I made a few wrong turns trying to find the correct back entrance to the Hilton, so the ride took a little longer than one would expect. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and was almost sad to drop her off.

As we were approaching the hotel, I asked her why she was at the Hilton in Parsippany if she lived only an hour away in Elizabeth. She told me she was attending a conference at the Hilton and rather than staying at the hotel each night, she had driven up. I surmised she had walked to the Wendy's for dinner because she had not wanted to pay the prices at the hotel for her meal. (Or maybe she just really, really liked Wendy's coffee and had not realized that on foot it was not really next door to the Hilton. She was in suburbia.)

"What kind of conference?" I asked.

"NAACP," she replied.

And it suddenly occurred to me that she was African American. Of course, I must have noticed, but it had never entered into my calculation the first, second time or final time I offered her a ride. I was surprised to consider that for a moment I had been colorblind. And I hoped that I had provided her a story to share at her conference, which was undoubtedly focused on race. A story about a white suburban woman offering a black stranger a ride in suburbia.