Bag Lady III - Happy Thanksgiving

As I sat and ate my slice of veggie pizza in the triangular little park off Pioneer Square, an old man sat next to me and gave me a gap tooth smile. I smiled back to reveal a growing gap in my own two front teeth. He offered me a swig from his rectangular bottle, and I politely declined.

Together we watched a many layered old woman, in flowing skirts and a hooded jacket make her way down the sidewalk with her shopping cart. She stopped at the front of each cafe and delicately pulled from each respective garbage can a variety of food boxes.

"Oh," I said, a little sadly, "the poor dear doesn't have any food."

"No," my compatriot replied, "That's Apple Annie. She's alright."

Apple Annie, I thought, as she pulled out yet another container and slid it into her apple brand grocery bag.

Annie continued her "shopping spree", carefully picking through the discarded food, until she had a stack that towered over her.

She moved gingerly towards us. Reaching a green and open space against an old brick and ivy covered wall, she half squatted, and sank into an amazingly graceful sprawl, not losing one of her boxes.

Then she stretched out her dirty, but dignified arm and the birds started coming.

Sparrows and gulls, crows and starlings, even one indigo stellar jay. They settled on her arms, her shoulders, her legs, even her ratty cloche hat.

She opened up one of the boxes and began feeding the birds. Her birds.

I don't think I have ever seen so much bliss on an adult face.

A child with their first helium balloon, watching it rise before they realize it's gone, or a kite playing along the waves.

Bit by bit she threw the food up and it was caught mid-air by one of a dozen hungry mouths. The smaller birds huddled under her skirts, hopping down, pecking among the crumbs while the shadows of the larger birds fell across their path, snatching, diving, lifting, and coming back.

Annie was the queen of the the birds, every day.

Her communion with them was as complete a miracle as I have ever seen.

And it made my pity, in retrospect, seem a small thing indeed.