Kathleen, the Firefly: a Firefly Story

During the summer after Victoria was born, when my work schedule allowed, the three of us fell into a Sunday ritual that consisted of breakfast croissants at a nearby café, a leisurely stroll to the Brooklyn Museum, and a walk through the Rose Garden of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. After consuming our croissants (with some telltale crumbs gracing my chest), we would circle back towards our apartment on St. John’s Place and then head to the museum for a brief glimpse of culture. One of our family rules was that we would never make Victoria stay in a museum past her attention span. So in her first years, that meant we had about 20 minutes before she would tire of the quiet and threaten a shrieking exhibition that would wake the mummified.

One beautiful Sunday morning in Victoria’s fourth month we left our apartment for our croissant, museum, and garden stroll. Once outside we realized that we had forgotten Victoria’s diaper bag. I volunteered to run back upstairs to gather the wayward item, dispatching Kathleen to the café to commandeer our favorite table near the window.

“You two go ahead, I’ll catch up,” I said as I headed back towards our building. When I re-emerged a few minutes later, I walked the two blocks to Flatbush Avenue where I could see Victoria, thumb in mouth, riding Kathleen’s right hip. With her left hand, Kathleen was holding the now empty stroller in front of her. They were a block and a half in front of me, having moved at an unusually slow pace. I quickened my pace to catch up to them when I noticed that Kathleen had stopped and was talking to a friend. After a moment, she smiled, hugged the man, handed Victoria to him, and then stood back in silence.

The scene struck me as curious for a couple reasons. First, at the risk of propagating male stereotypes, I feel fairly confident in saying that most men are not itching to hold other people’s four-month-old babies. Therefore, the sight of Victoria’s exchange from Kathleen to the man struck me as a little odd. Second, the man was wearing a heavy coat that did not befit a warm summer morning like this.

As I got closer I could more clearly see the man who was now rocking Victoria in his arms. I realized that he was not some jogging buddy or colleague of Kathleen’s but a homeless man. His clothes, probably colorful in their original incarnations, were now a ragged brownish-gray or grayish-brown. He was hunched over, and his age was hard to detect. I’m sure a bath and a month of healthy eating would have taken 10 years off his haggard appearance, but at that point, he just appeared to be “older.”

As soon as the light changed, I sprinted across the street. I was furious. As I reached Kathleen, I cried out, “What are you doing? He’s … homeless!” (In stressful moments, I am eminently capable of stating the obvious.)

I was furious that Kathleen had given our daughter to a man who almost certainly hadn’t bathed in weeks. He likely hadn’t changed his clothes for months. In my mind he was possibly a carrier of some disease or organism we hoped Victoria would never encounter. Due to my block-long sprint and a rush of adrenaline my chest was heaving.

Kathleen glared and shot out her right arm to the side, palm open much as the Supremes did when singing “Stop in the Name of Love.” Her open palm hit me hard in the chest, taking my breath away. She held it there, pushing against my instinct.

The homeless man gracefully squatted down on his cardboard shanty, which he collapsed with one hand to form a corrugated barrier between him, my daughter (whom he held in his other arm) and a dried pool of his own urine.

I was still furious, but Kathleen’s touch stopped me from saying anything. Kathleen silently alternated her observation from the homeless man to me and back down again. Her eyes guided me to Victoria. The man held our child gently in his arms, slowly rocking her as he summoned some long buried paternal instinct. He stared at Victoria who, in return, smiled brightly and giggled back. She didn’t fuss, fidget or fight; she seemed perfectly content.

Kathleen looked at me and smiled as she kept her hand on my chest, now softening her touch to an almost loving embrace of my heart. We stood paralyzed on this Brooklyn sidewalk, an urban Norman Rockwell portrait. Several New Yorkers passed by this strange scene of a white woman holding off a Black man from retrieving his daughter from a homeless man. They passed, paused for a moment, and in typical New Yorker style resumed their Sunday activities without comment.

Every hard-won instinct sent a warning to every inch of my brain, telling me to grab my daughter, protect her, keep her away from the danger and disease this man presented. But the combination of Kathleen’s touch and Victoria’s apparent joy moderated that inclination. Kathleen continued shifting her gaze, back and forth, equally interested in the reactions of the homeless man, Victoria, and me.

She watched me in silence for a moment then whispered, “He needs this. He needs to touch humanity.” 

“What is her name?” the man asked quietly, still staring at our daughter. 

“Victoria,” Kathleen said before I could reply. 

“Ah, like the greatest British queen,” he whispered to the baby in his arms.

After another few minutes, the man looked at me and asked in a surprisingly gentle voice, “May I kiss her cheek?” I wanted to say a quick “no.” But Kathleen pushed her hand against my heart. Instead, I remained silent.

“Of course you may,” Kathleen replied as she looked at me.

With that authorization the homeless man smiled and wiped away a tear. Then he gently gave Victoria a peck on the cheek before presenting her back up to Kathleen, much as Mufasa had done with Simba in The Lion King. 

Kathleen released her magical hold on my chest and recaptured Victoria, who was still smiling and giggling as her mother strapped her into the stroller. Kathleen then asked the man for his name. With tears in his eyes, he paused for a long time, as if it been so long since anyone asked his name that he needed time to gather it from his memory. 

“Clifford[1],” he finally said.

Kathleen smiled and said, “Thank you, Clifford. You have made my day.” She gave me a sidelong glance that I was unable to interpret before turning back to Clifford and shaking his hand. I did the same, and then we resumed our Sunday stroll to the café for our croissants. Neither Kathleen nor I ever said another word about that sidewalk interplay.

On subsequent days, I would see Clifford again in that same spot. I would stop, greet him and ask how he was doing. His answers sometimes spurred a brief conversation. He told me he was a veteran and that he had somehow lost the connecting thread of his life once he left the army. He had a family he hadn’t seen “in a long time” and wondered how they were doing. He told me about his renewed desire to “get it together.” I smiled and encouraged him though I doubted his new plan. He would ask about “that beautiful little girl, Queen Victoria,” a question that always warmed my heart. I would give him some coffee or a few dollars and tell him to hang in there. We would shake hands and I would continue on my way.

A couple months later I left our apartment at about 6 a.m. I was starting a trial in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and I wanted to practice my opening statement. As I came to Clifford’s usual spot, he was awake and waiting for me. He jumped up and hugged me, holding on for a surprising few moments.

“Today will be the last time I see you,” he said, barely able to contain his excitement.

“Why?” I asked.

“You don’t know? I’m going home.”

“That’s just great, congratulations!” I said, happy that he was beginning to knit his life back together.

“Kathleen didn’t tell you?”

“Kathleen? No.”

“Well, Kathleen tracked my family down in Kansas City six months ago and she has been talking to them, convincing them to allow me to come back home.”

I was shaken to my core. Kathleen had been talking to his family for six months? That predated our sidewalk encounter with Victoria. I slowly began to realize that Kathleen already knew Clifford at the time of that encounter. Now I saw it all differently. His confusion when Kathleen asked him his name was because she already knew his name. She wanted me to hear his name. I was the one who needed to touch humanity!

Clifford pointed to a plastic shopping bag. “Kathleen bought me some clothes for the trip,” he said. He showed me khaki pants, a dark sweatshirt, underwear, socks and new white sneakers.

“Tonight I get to sleep in a hotel room near Penn Station and order room service!” he said with a child’s delight.

My head was swimming. I was still stuck at the notion that they’d been talking for six months.

Clifford continued, “I will take a bath, get a haircut, shave, and order room service. Tomorrow I will get on the Amtrak train for my trip home.”

At this point we were both crying. Both of us were happy for him. I shed some additional tears for me. Kathleen was light. How I had stumbled upon this firefly, and why she chose to join her life with mine, I will never fully understand.

I never saw Clifford again. But I have thought of him over the years and hope that he returned home to the embrace of his family as I did to mine.

[1] Not his real name.