STORY OF CITY CLEANERS
[copied from unknown source]
In every city, there is some unknown, selfless dedication to the city.
They are city cleaners.
On both sides of the road, in the nameless alleys, shining orange, they used brooms to wave out the colors of the city.
In the shade, I’m taking a cool ride.
Accompanied by a squeaky bike ride, a cleaner came on the way. He, probably in his fifties, walked very well, saw me, smiled at me, an old face, a pair of poor eyes under a pair of thick eyebrows, pores thick, slightly bearded, dry lips, white.
He smiled at me, and so did I. Sitting in a wooden chair, I saw him holding an ordinary broom, another holding a bump, skillfully sweeping the already yellow petals on the ground, mouth from time to time gasping for air.
The day is very hot, and he, still meticulously cleaning, bean big sweat beads from his face constantly rolling down, ticking, ticking …
“Bob, take a break!” It’s too hot. “I couldn’t help but walk up and whisper.
“No…” He glanced at me and continued to immerse himself in his work.
“Just take a break!” I really can’t bear to see it, and I’m asking again.
“Well, then!” When he saw me so sincere, he stopped cleaning.
He sat down along the wooden chair, took off his hat, fanned himself, and could clearly see the root white hair from his head. Looking at that pair of old hands, the hand is thin is an old man, thumb is also injured, wrapped in a piece of already dirty and broken can be paste.
Before long, he began to sweep the floor again, one, two, three… It’s finally cleaned up.
“Good-bye, kid!”
“Again — see — “
Looking at his distant back, my heart was sour…
One day in early November, an less man saw a pile of hats, gloves, sweaters and other warm-up items in a park in downtown Boston, leaving a note that said, “I’m not lost.” If you’re stuck in the cold outdoors, feel free to keep warm. “Looking at these hand-woven fabrics, I suddenly opened up: so that the warmth to the most needed, unknown people, is not the best Christmas gift?”
What I saw and heard over the next few days convinced me even more that the best gift in the world is kindness to strangers. On the way home with my daughter on a weekend night before Christmas, he accidentally drove his car into a stone ditch, his head drooping and its rear wheels dangling, and the insurance company’s emergency services had to be used. On the phone, someone came in a big truck with trailer facilities. The master towed my car back to the road and checked that my car was intact. He told me that using trailer equipment, which exceeded the insurance company’s quota for every emergency service, would have required me to pay extra, but he wouldn’t have let me pay. “Happy holidays!” He shook my hand and left.
At that moment, I stood in the cold wind feeling good warm: the trailer master with his unpaid labor, trapped in the winter night did not know a mother and daughter sent a precious holiday wishes.
The story posted by a friend on Facebook was even more shocking to me about how much energy the kindness of strangers can have. The story features Mary King, a professor of medicine and genetics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. When she was teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1981, her husband suddenly said he was breaking up with her, and he fell in love with one of his graduate students. After he finished packing his bags, he left home to go on a field trip overseas with his new lover.
Professor King was speechless at the time, and the shock and hurt in his heart was predictable. The next day she went to class as usual and was told by the dean that she had been given a tenure. From kindergarten to pick up more than 5-year-old daughter Emily home, and found the home was ransacked by thieves and full of misery. After this series of dramatic experiences, what makes her most difficult is the question many single mothers have to face: How to be both a mother and do their job well? She was about to go to an academic conference in Washington, D.C., to be interviewed by the research fund she had applied for, but who would take care of her daughter?
She had to ask her mother to fly from Chicago to San Francisco to help. Who knew that the mother was an old-school person, on the way from the airport to home, when he heard that the father of the child had left home, completely unable to accept this reality, can not control their emotions. The old mother complained all the way: “How could he ruin this family like this?” How can a child grow up without a father? “The old man also shouted to find the son-in-law to evaluate, the daughter had to say that others have been overseas. So the mother began to count down her daughter, “How can you leave your child at such a moment, no matter what academic conference they go to?” No, I can’t take care of Emily. “Emily was sitting in the car, and she couldn’t look at it.
As soon as Professor King saw the situation, she had to call her tutor and say she couldn’t go to the academic conference. The tutor, who had arrived in Washington, D.C., at the time, suggested, “You bring Emily together for a meeting.” I know Emily very well, I can play with Emily during your interview. “But Emily doesn’t have a ticket. “ “It’s all right, I’ll arrange a plane ticket for her and your mother right away.” I’m sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye! “
Early the next morning, Professor King went to San Francisco airport with her mother and daughter, who had to be put on a plane back to Chicago and then fly east with her daughter to the East Coast. But the road to the airport that day was blocked, originally 45 minutes walk nearly two hours to the airport. It was only 15 minutes before her mother’s departure and 45 minutes before she and her daughter took off, and there was a long queue to get her daughter’s ticket.
Emily, you’re lining up here yourself, and Mom has to get Grandma on the plane and come back. Her mother was quick to listen: “How can you leave your child here alone?” “
Just then, a man’s voice came behind her: “Emily has me, it’ll be all right!” “As soon as she turned around and saw a man, she quickly said to him, “Thank you! “
Her mother said, “How can you give Emily to someone you don’t know?” “
She moved, “If you can’t trust Joe De Monchi, who else can you trust?” “The man would like to reach out to Emily and introduce himself, “Hello, my name is Joe. “Emily shook his hand, “I’m Emily. “
After sending her mother, she saw Emily and “Joe” there talking and laughing, and the ticket had been taken. She thanked “Joe” for a military salute and walked away.
Professor King finally got on the plane on time. Her interview went well and she got a research fund. It was the fund that made her the first genetic variant in medical history to be discovered that led to breast cancer, BRCA1, and she began to make the medical community realize that breast cancer can actually be inherited family- I can’t imagine whether the history of breast cancer would have been rewritten without the help of the kind-hearted “Joe” that day.
