The Grand Central Parable

❄︎☀︎❄︎

A Manhattan story about waiting, being seen, and discovering that a gift may not be what we first thought it was.

There was a young girl in Manhattan who humbly yet confidently was certain as she thought, I know that I have a gift to share. Maybe I am smart. Maybe a little beyond my years. But I must share what I know.

She felt compelled to start a novel, and she poured everything her little heart had into it. Her novel was full of beautiful truth and light in a way that no little girl her age ever should have held.

She thought, I will go to Central Park, and someone will certainly notice me there. They will see me with my story and somehow know that it is special.

My novel. My gift to give.

I will sit in the middle of the park and continue writing and forming my story. Someone will realize how special it is. I believe it is a gift for me to share with others. Maybe, just maybe, it will help someone find their way out of struggling and into their light.

She went right to the middle of Central Park. To her, the famous park was massive and at times scary to navigate. Often she found herself off route and feared she would never find her way home.

Her quiet spirit gently said to the world through a silent offering, Hey, if you want to stop for a moment, I have something to help you, if you would just take a minute to hear it.

No one noticed her or her novel.

They were spending afternoons with their lovers, chasing after their children, hanging out, and ganging out. She lamented the young boys in gangs and understood just how far off they were in trying to find their identity by belonging.

She showed up day after day, week after week, year after year. Like the trees that shaded her, she grew silent and strong, always bearing her truth, always waiting for someone, anyone, to be blessed by her offering.

But the people were too busy enjoying their days to notice the young girl who had become a young woman.

And so she decided to make a new home and maybe tell her story somewhere else. Maybe in a different way.

She pondered and realized that the best place ever to share her beautiful story, the one she had woven through the years with her rich tapestry of words by shaping it, pruning it, growing it, tenderly loving it and knowing it was meant to be shared… would be the centre of the universe as she knew it.

Grand Central Station.

Tens of thousands of people at a time raced through this enormous structure of movement and masses.

She had it! This was it!

She found that sometimes it felt like endless halls, walls, trails, and rails. Other times it was magical and luminous.

She had finally found her place and could not wait for someone to be blessed by the gift of the story she ached to give the world.

The quiet of the very early morning. The rush hour was uniquely its own. The silence between trains. The hum beneath the stone.

It all lived at Grand Central Station.

She was there all the time. Eagerly, yet still silently, waiting and wondering if she was right.

Was it possible she had made a mistake? She had been so sure she was supposed to do exactly this; to give the gift of her story.

But time passed. And she wondered. Was there a soul who would see that she had a gift at all?

Was there a soul who would see her at all? Were there any souls anywhere at all?

But she stayed.

She came to know that the massive terminal had a pulse all its own, swelling and flowing like immense breaths of humming life. Jarringly awake during the busy morning and again in the miserable evening, with its heads-down rush.

But the in-between time was quiet, almost disjointed. The few stranded ones sat like lily pads in a deep pond of unconnected souls, rarely touching, never noticing one another, each keeping their own thoughts, purpose, fears, and tears to themselves.

Never glancing up.

God forbid.

Days, weeks, and years went by, and still she patiently waited.

She observed.

She waited.

During rush hour, the masses moved sightlessly, blinded into motion with the crowds, resentful of the day they had just had, resentful of all they still had to do once home.

Hurrying, hurrying.

Scurrying, scurrying.

Step, step, step.

Maybe bragging about how they were one step ahead of their colleagues that day.

Or maybe they had done nothing at all with their day, the same as every other day, and were proud of themselves, waiting to get home to do nothing again.

Then there were the regulars who spent days and nights there like her, begging or playing guitar, waiting for a bill to be tossed into a case.

She stood in the middle of it all.

It’s okay, she thought. I don’t need to be noticed. But if only they knew what their lives could really be like. If only they could pause for a moment from the rush, the rush, the trying to do and prove, the trying to find, the trying to hide, the trying to rise at any cost.

Hurry, hurry.

Scurry, scurry.

Step, step, step.

They moved in crowds. They moved forward. Maybe there was no one there except the woman late for her train, forced to wait another two hours, who came closer curiously and cautiously.

Maybe.

Then she put her head down and hurried, hurried, scurried, scurried, stepped, stepped, stepped away.

Then… a surprise! A woman who looked to be about ninety years old directly approached her. She was shaken with delight to even be noticed.

But this was no ordinary woman.

Instantly, she recognized that this was a woman who knew. Standing almost brazenly in front of her, the elder stared, but did not speak to the young woman.

She only looked.

Hard.

LOOK AT ME.

Her piercing ocean-coloured eyes glared into the young woman’s spirit, and at that same moment, something struck her heart and lifted it. Really lifted it.

The older woman’s ocean-coloured eyes told her absolute truth. A magnificent and terrifying truth.

Your world isn’t over yet. Yet, child, there are still mountains. High mountains.

But oh, sweet child, after you struggle, after you toil, after you barely have a breath left to breathe, I promise you, the summit is so surprising.

The smell is untellable. The taste of the chill in the breeze. The embrace of mountain air when the wind blows coolness and warmth around your hair and hits your eyes as you see heights you never knew existed.

Oh, that you have the courage, the patience, the strength.

Her gaze sharpened, somehow finding its way further into the young woman’s inner chambers.

Her eyes seemed to say, If only you are willing.

The young woman was filled with wonder and dreams and hope and fear and confidence. This lovely elder woman had shown her that she was capable.

But she had also clearly shown that it would come at a cost.

I can do it, she thought. I can do it.

She was overwhelmed with joyful expectation. Excited. Determined. Confident.

She watched the lovely older woman walk away. A little fragile, yet still standing proudly. Tall and so very beautiful. So very beautiful, even well-advanced in her years.

Oddly, this woman with the ocean-coloured eyes felt familiar.

She wondered how that was possible.

Something about the way those beautiful, sharp eyes looked directly into her spirit left her feeling as if the woman herself owned part of it.

But she was gone.

And the reality of possibility rose within the young woman, and she knew she could never say no to a possibility constructed of truth.

Again, she was alone in the massive emptiness and fullness of Grand Central Station. The silence and humming pulse lasted for hours, days, weeks, years.

Then she heard shuffling that flickered in her spirit, and she looked up to see two people walking together. One of them, a woman, had her head bowed, feet almost racing like a frenzied horse forced to slow down.

Beside the hell-bent woman was a young child, half-running, half-walking, his mother ignorant to the fact that it was not easy for him to keep up with her long, rapid stride.

His legs were tired and his asthma was suffocating. But that was not what troubled the young boy. His heart was yearning, aching, and barely still hoping.

If only his mother could look down for a moment and see.

Because the young, out-of-breath boy waited and hoped. He wanted her to look at him.

Just once.

Just for a fraction of a second.

Just once… please.

Maybe then he would know whether his mother truly saw him as anything more than a chore.

More than a burden.

And he hoped as her own thoughts drove her forward.

Hurrying, hurrying.

Scurrying, scurrying.

Step, step, step.

But she did not look.

A heavy shadow in his young little soul knew that she never would.

The young woman watching them noticed the light in his beautiful, hopeful child-heart, how it shone in his eyes, somehow still carrying a thin thread of hope; silently pleading for just one shard of love from the cold woman who could not care less that he was wheezing and aching to keep up with her.

The patient young woman could do nothing but look at him with tenderness, her heart aching for him, knowing what it was like to never be seen.

The beautiful child noticed her too and looked at her quizzically.

She was filled with unspeakable emotion, and suddenly her heart overflowed with unexpected love for this young boy, a stranger of a child whose quiet defeat was covered in a shadow of hope.

And so she did the only thing she could do.

She embraced this beautiful young boy with all her being. Hoping and praying that her spirit could reach him.

Prayerfully, she drove her thoughts toward him. Silently, she ached for him to feel it. Calmly, she gave it the only way she could.

With her eyes locked directly on his.

And then… a small miracle. The corners of the beautiful child’s lips lifted.

He smiled. Just a little smile, tentative at first, but then it filled his face entirely.

She sees me, he thought.

And it meant something to him.

It meant so much. So extraordinarily much to her.

She closed her eyes for a moment in deep emotion, trying to centre herself through the quiet upheaval that had just happened and block the tears that were threatening to wash over her cheeks.

Thank God, she thought.

She fully lived that moment in his radiant smile and in those beautiful little eyes that had started to shine because he had seen her love, felt it, and been washed over by it.

The day, her story, her gift, her purpose, and everything she always knew she had to offer had finally been given.

After all the waiting, it had not been wasted.

What a blessing. What a magnificent, wondrous gift, to make this precious child feel loved, even if only for a passing moment.

She knew the young boy would carry this shared moment with him on the train. He would sit beside his silent, bitter mother, already knowing that to her, he was only a burden.

But now he had seen, felt, and experienced love freely and entirely in the glance and prayer of the lovely young woman’s eyes.

His mother fumed inwardly about how sick and tired she was of always having to work, to mother, to do, do, do things.

But the sweet boy did not notice.

His soul was still basking in the prayer that had seen his heart, his hopeful eyes, and the little shadow he could not even name.

For a minute, he was loved.

And that mattered.

He felt it, even if he could not name it.

It was enough to open a door he had never known, but now knew he could one day find again.

His world and his belief in goodness and love changed in that glance.

He had found something unexpected: possibility.

The lovely young woman had done something exceptional.

She had given her gift.

She got up and finally went home, knowing her story had been heard deep in the older woman’s ocean-coloured eyes and tangibly in the young boy’s spirit.

Her story had finally been heard.

And the mountain breeze of life ahead was already tickling her spirit.

Easter Ellen

~ writing what won’t leave me alone until it is expressed