Wednesday, January 5, 2011

The Other Man in my Life

Today I want to talk about a new man in my life. I will start of explaining that our building is on a corner and next to us is a center that is for Senior Citizens. After googling about the center I have learned that it is a center that the NYC provides for Senior Citizens. They are able to buy meals at $1.50 x  6 days a week. They seem to also have workshops and basically there for the elderly who are less fortunate. There is also apartments that were converted from what once was a hotel. I read that they are subsidized and are available to senior citizens that have below a certain amount of money available to them. In other words it’s again there for the less fortunate.
From the first day I walked by which we do a few times a day a older African American Man would acknowledge the girls and I and very courteously would say a warm “hi”. I have to admit probably for the first week or two I didn’t really pay attention except of course returning the courteous gesture back. I was very consumed with getting the apartment set up and also organizing school and various other things that I had to do with two kids in tow. After a while this man started to really acknowledge both Annika and Isabel. He would say “Hi girls” and then to me say “look after them they are our future”. I thought about it and I really liked what he was saying. And from that day on its been a daily ritual where we see him and we always say hello and he says the same thing and now even blows them a kiss. The girls also look forward to seeing him and after we had the blizzard we missed his morning greeting as he was not around for a few days. I actually got really concerned as I was worried that something may of happened to him. He has a walking frame and it would have been impossible for him to get around as I know I could not with the stroller. Luckily the snow has been cleared up and he was back out again. The other day I noticed that he knew everyone ones name that walked by him and he also would make a comment or talk about something with them that was relevant to them. He is such an optimistic and kind hearted old man.
Until today we have never formally stopped and introduced ourselves.  This morning Isabel, Annika and I stopped and did. His name is Theo and he is a breath of fresh air that we breath in every morning as we leave our building.

No comments: