Tim Madigan

Not long ago I was fortunate to visit the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, Florida. While there I engaged in a spirited, hour-long conversation with 150 deaf teen-agers. They peppered me with many excellent questions about my career, including one I had never been asked. Of all the stories I had written for newspapers, one student wondered, what was my favorite?

As it turned out, I had recently thought about that myself. I wrote my first newspaper story for my hometown paper, the Crookston Daily Times, as a high school student in 1974. In the nearly four decades since there have been thousands more. Long stories and short. Chronicles of tragedy and heartbreak; celebration and perseverance and courage. Stories about evil people, (see Koresh, David) and historically great people. (See Rogers, Fred.)

I wrote an essay once about my son’s performance in a Christmas pageant when he was little, and that is probably my all-time favorite, but that needs to be in a category of its own.

Of all the others, from all those years, the one that follows is at the top of the list. Frankly, after all the ink that has been spilled, I’m kind of surprised to realize that myself.

**

By Tim Madigan
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
May 8, 2000

I don’t know her name. I considered asking on that sunny afternoon in Burnett Park, but for some reason didn’t. All I know is that she had shoulder-length dark hair, was probably somewhere in her thirties, and I might never forget her gesture.

I had gone to the park to sit in the sun, eat a tuna sandwich and work a crossword puzzle. Several yards away, a woman dressed in rags lay on a concrete bench in the shade, her back to me. She was mumbling. As I ate, I saw the dark-haired woman approach, holding a bottle of nail polish.

“Can I do those for you?” she asked the woman in rags.

The homeless woman mumbled something in reply, but I couldn’t hear what. The dark-haired woman shrugged, handed the homeless person the bottle of polish, and walked away to another sunny spot. She sat down and lit a cigarette. When our eyes met, she smiled and looked away, embarrassed.

The sun was warm, and after a few minutes I moved to a spot in the shade next to a fountain. The dark-haired woman came over and dipped her hands in the water.

“I saw you move further away from me,” she said. “I wondered if you thought I was crazy.”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“I was here doing my nails and I saw that woman lying there,” the dark-haired woman said. “I thought it had probably been a long time since anyone had done anything nice for her. So I thought, ‘Why not?’ I asked if I could do her nails. She wanted no part of that, so I just gave her the nail polish.”

She shook the water from her hands.

“You probably think I’m crazy,” she said again.

“I don’t think you’re crazy at all,” I said.

Then the dark-haired lady walked away, disappearing into the tall buildings downtown. When I left the park, the homeless woman was gone, too.