Miracle on Bladensburg Road 2 comments

By Caroline Langston

It was a cold Tuesday before Christmas, around seven o’clock at night, and I was sitting in the McDonald’s in Colmar Manor, Maryland, wondering exactly how it had come to this.

I’d come home late from work; my festive dinner out with my Bible study girlfriends Linda and Halima had been unexpectedly cancelled. “I was just planning to take him to McDonald’s,” my husband admitted sheepishly, nodding in the direction of our five-year-old son, who already had his coat on and was jumping up at down at the possible Avatar toys that might be lurking in his 4-piece Chicken McNuggets Happy Meal.

He must have seen the expression on my face. “You weren’t even going to be home, anyway.” And because I wasn’t prepared to head into the kitchen and finish making the black beans, rice, and salad that’s become a standard dinner for us this Advent, I put my coat back on, we bundled the baby up, and off we went.

Not, however, without some misgivings: For a certain swath of the would-be upper middle class, especially parents, eating at McDonald’s is as close as they’ll ever get to the concept of eating treyf, the ritually unclean foods eschewed by Kosher-keeping Jews. (Remember the Prodigal Son in his self-imposed exile, eating the pods he was supposed to be feeding the pigs, disgusted with himself?)

Going to McDonald’s was also an open admission on my part that I was choosing, at least for the night, to flout the meat and dairy fast that Orthodox Christian tradition prescribes for the six weeks of Advent. Never mind the fact that, as a nursing mother, I was exempted from strict observance, my husband is Catholic, and my son young enough to fast only minimally.

I was bugged nonetheless: It has been a tough Advent season for me: My husband and I have been worn down by the daily scheduling, I have fought off intermittent doubts about how present God is in the midst of the chaos, and the meatless meals we have served have been poignant, lifesaving reminders of the feast for which we’re waiting.

Plus, I was just plain feeling sorry for myself: Just that week, I had seen the name of an old friend listed in the Social List of Washington Life magazine, and I was pretty sure that he probably never ever had to go to McDonald’s, and especially not the McDonald’s in Colmar Manor, Maryland—a little low-rent urban hamlet hard on the banks of the Anacostia River on the D.C./Maryland line that had been the scene of the Battle of Bladensburg in the War of 1812, but known now primarily for its automobile chop shops, liquor stores, and Quinceañera party supply warehouses.

My own little town a couple of miles away, which Washington Post writer Gigi Anders once referred to as “uber gauche,” seems, with its trees and hills and starkly perfect tiny Colonials, like a paradise by comparison.

We stumbled into the restaurant’s bright, plastic-y fluorescence, barreled up to the counter, and ordered, like the Americans we all are: a Happy Meal for Alex, a hamburger and fries for my husband, and a grilled chicken salad for me. We settled into one of the hard, shiny plastic booths, the baby in her car seat alongside us, bowed our heads in prayer (for real), then tucked in.

It was then that I really took notice of them, the small group of people sitting a few feet away from us. These other people, like us, were white—unlike everybody else in the restaurant. There was something odd about their faces, the ways that they spoke. They huddled grimly in a couple of booths, and spoke without really looking at one another.

At first I thought, rather grandly, that these were residents of a group home, out for dinner. (More affluent neighborhoods generally succeed in keeping group homes out.) But it soon became clear that these folks, more likely, were just white and poor.

White and poor. That last identity of shame. The one thing—the last thing—I’ve lived in basest fear of ever being called. The threat that has lain underneath all the pretensions I’ve assumed.

All of a sudden, one of the women in the group got up, and heading toward the restroom, started right toward us. She was very tall and broad, in a baggy sweatshirt decorated with a Christmas tree, her large round face topped with a tail of gray hair.

My first thought was to avert my eyes, more from the standard urban-dweller tenet of not acknowledging others, rather than any scorn of her status. Don’t ever talk to strangers, parents tell their children now, frantic with worry. Don’t even say hello. I had always prided myself on avoiding all that paranoia, but now was practicing it myself.

The basic element of the code: Don’t get involved.

But here she came. When she got closer, I saw what the bottom of her sweatshirt said, underneath its Christmas Tree appliqué.

It said, Joy to the World.

“That’s a beautiful baby,” she said, leaning over the car seat, and sticking out her hand.

At that moment, I let go of all those parenting worries and watched the woman, whoever she was, catch up my daughter’s hand in hers, the warmth of their human skins briefly meeting each other, and becoming divine.