Counting

Two years ago, Sandy wasn't working because she had metastatic breast cancer, but she felt pretty good after a few months of chemo, so she felt guilty about not working. In fact, she talked a lot about needing to start looking for a job in a few months. I tried to dissuade her at every opportunity, encouraging her instead to pursue other interests. She took a woodworking class that she enjoyed, spent time with friends, started a few home projects.

None of that was enough. It was important to her to contribute to the world, so she sought out volunteer opportunities. ("I'm not working; the least I can do is x," she'd say.) So she was driving over to the East side to phone bank for Suzan DelBene's campaign every week. She beta read stories for friends. And in early September, she called me over to look over her shoulder at her laptop and said, "We should do this." It was the annual cyclist and pedestrian count. We signed up to count people at the corner of Broadway & John (less than a mile from our house) from 4:00 to 6:00 one evening.

We biked there because Sandy's osteoarthritis made walking difficult. We locked up our bikes to the trash bins, pulled out our clipboards, and got our thoughts together. And then Sandy said, "Okay, I'm sitting down." And she eased herself down onto the curb, one leg sticking out into the road. There she stayed for the next two hours, as we traded off, one of us calling out the numbers and the other one entering the tally marks.

I don't have any photos of Sandy that say "counting people,"
so here's a random photo from 2004.

A few times, people stopped to ask if she was okay, if we needed their help. That was sweet, but it took us a few tries to figure out how to graciously thank someone without interrupting our counting flow. Other people just stopped by to ask what we were doing - gathering signatures? Working on the details of some new construction project? (And what a few people didn't say but seemed to be thinking: were we terrorists, somehow staking out the corner for future attacks?) We quickly learned how to say we were counting pedestrians and cyclists for the city. It wasn't strictly accurate, but it was close enough, and it satisfied passersby without causing us to mess up on our numbers.

We were exhausted after two hours. Eyes crossed, mouths dry, limbs stiff (hers from sitting, mine from standing/shifting/leaning on the traffic light pole). We were very satisfied with ourselves, though, as we unlocked our bikes and climbed on for the short uphill ride home. We also agreed that we'd suggest they have three or even four people assigned to that corner next year, because it's far too busy for two people.

I don't even remember seeing the call for volunteers last year, though it must have come to my inbox. This year, I signed up. They had only one slot for the intersection this time, instead of two. The opposite of what we'd recommended. I went for the same corner, but I emailed the coordinator and let her know I planned to have a gang with me. She was thrilled, said I could recruit whomever I wanted. But then the people I asked were all unable to do it or never got back to me, and I tired of asking. So I just decided I'd do it alone, as best I could, and see if I couldn't summon what Sandy and I had brought to the task together.

I arrived a little early so I could mentally rehearse, analyze traffic patterns, figure out how to focus my energy efficiently. I saw one person I knew just before the official start time, so I was able to chat with her. But between 4:00 and 6:00, I was unfortunately pretty rude to the lost and lonely who saw me as a likely chatting partner. A woman with a clipboard on Broadway is usually begging people to stop and talk, trying to get signatures or, more likely, donations for some organization or another. Yet there I was, with my clipboard, actively avoiding conversation. For some people, you could tell it was just too much. One older guy approached and said, "What you doing there, honey?" When I turned my back, straining to count the number of people who'd just headed north on the other side of the intersection (was it 12? 14? and had two of them just peeled off to the west?), he assumed I'd taken offense. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have called you honey." He'd clearly been schooled before. I hadn't even noticed what he'd said, and now that there was a brief lull in pedestrian traffic, I could half turn toward him, and say, "No, I'm just counting. Can't talk." He wandered away.

I didn't sit on the curb, so no one asked if I was injured. In fact, except for the few people who seemed to be looking for someone to talk to, most people didn't seem to notice I was there at all. The city just went on around me, oblivious to my task, just as the world has gone on, oblivious to my pain. Everything's a metaphor.

The most amusing thing I saw was someone pushing a full-size mattress on its side on a small dolly. I have no idea how far he'd come, but I got the sense he'd been doing it for a while. I laughed and told him he won for the oddest thing I'd seen today; he smiled, shook his head, and said "you do what you've got to do" and off he went, pushing the mattress in front of him. I was glad for him that the rains haven't started yet, and then realized I was lucky, too.

I thought about Sandy a lot, in between frantic counting binges. And though I was both counting and tallying, I said the numbers out loud before I wrote them down. Two west, four south, one east, bike south, three north, four south - oh wait, no three south and one west, bike north, etc. My mouth was just as dry when I finished this year as it had been two years ago, but I didn't mind. Acting out both of our roles kept me from feeling alone or overwhelmed and also helped me focus.

I'm sure I didn't catch every pedestrian, or possibly even every bicycle, but I think I did as well as anyone could have without having more people assigned to watching different directions. And it pleased me to stand on that corner in 2012, half of my mind in 2010, doing exactly the same thing that we had done together two years ago.