He said his name was Melvin.  I was walking along the Seattle waterfront one grey spring afternoon, heading for the boat I would take home.  This wasn’t my usual route.  Usually after working a few hours for my friend Susan in the Medical Dental Building on 5^th Avenue I would take the light rail train from the Westlake Center to Tukwila to meet my husband, and then wait for him to finish his work day before heading home together across the sound.  But today I was heading back a little early to go to a meeting.

I finished my work and wandered down to the Pike Place Market to look for a bouquet of flowers in the stalls.  The Market was blooming with cut flowers, as usual, and I considered several of the bouquets.  But then I remembered that it would be several hours before I got home, too long for the flowers to keep, so I changed my mind.  I had a ten dollar bill in my pocket but I decided to just keep it.  I took the elevator down from the Market to the waterfront level of the parking garage, crossed Alaskan Way by the Seattle Aquarium and walked past the giant Ferris wheel on the way to my boat.  I was in no hurry.

A street person approached me.  He asked me if I would buy him some fish and chips at Ivar’s.  I don’t know why he appealed to me: his clothes were dirty and tattered, and I don’t usually like pan handlers, but then I’m usually in some awkward place when they approach me.

“Sure”, I said, without hesitation.  “What’s your name?”

“My name is Melvin”, he said.

We walked together to Ivar’s, where there’s a take-out window.  No one was in line.  Melvin ordered the biggest meal on the menu, but it was over $10 so I told him he could order whatever he wanted as long as long as it was $10 or less, and he placed an order of fish and chips and I paid.

Melvin was a tall, lanky black man with bad teeth.  He was probably 50 years old.  I spent only a few minutes chatting with him, but there was something about him that made him memorable to me.  Maybe it was that he walked in a loose-limbed gait like my late brother Jim.

Jim wasn’t a street person, but I remember going to a movie with him downtown one time, and when we came out, he seemed to know all of the street people by name.  There’s a lot I didn’t know about my older brother, but this impressed me.  Maybe he knew all of them from going to the local bars, or maybe he knew them from passing them by on his way to work every day.  But whatever it was, it struck me that Jim was far kinder than I ever thought of being.  He recognized every one of these marginalized people and addressed them by their proper names.

I was glad that I hadn’t spent my cash on a bouquet of flowers, and could instead use the money to give someone a meal.  I never saw Melvin again, but when I think about him I know it was my own soul that I needed to feed.