The Promised Land

The buildings loomed over the small city park like giant concrete redwoods. It was high-noon and the warm spring sun shined brightly on the yellow plastic playground.  Children’s sing-song voices drowned out the cars and buses passing by.  A man sat in the corner of the park, feeding seed to a half-dozen pigeons.  He quietly watched as the children played.

Every school day he sat on the same bench at the same time.  He followed the same ritual: He’d eat his sandwich. He’d read The Wall Street Journal. He’d feed the pigeons. And then he’d watch the same little girl play on the playground. Her name was Emily. His was Sam. She was 10. He was 70.  She was his grand daughter. And because he was estranged from her father, all he could do was just watch. From a distance. From afar. He was like a modern day Moses — he could enter not the promised land of time with his granddaughter. So he just watched from across the park.

Sam had come back from Vietnam a changed man.  His wife and young son no longer knew the hunched-over bearded man who stepped off the cargo plane. He had been a prisoner of war for five years.  His hair was gray and his mind was broken.

The young son never forgave his father for leaving his mother.  No young son could.  Sam wandered the country seeking help. He found it in the mid 1980’s at the foot of an altar.  A priest had reached out to him and helped him back to his feet. By 1990, his beard was gone and his life was being rebuilt one block at a time.

Across the country, the little boy had grown up into a man.  By 2001, he had a little girl of his own.  While he was raising his daughter, his father became successful in business.  Manhattan became everyone’s home.

So every weekday he sat. Wondering what it would be like if he could speak to Emily.  Wondering what it would be like to meet the son he had never really met. Instead, he just fed the grateful pigeons. He scattered his seed into the wind.

March 12, 2011 began like every other day. Sam sat on his bench, eating his sandwich and feeding his pigeons.  He saw the class come out of the church school, cross the street and enter the park.  And he saw her in her little uniform with her brown hair and brown eyes.  Even from across the park, she was beautiful. She looked just like her grandmother. God he loved her grandmother. She had died five years ago of a broken heart.  Yet another reason why his son would never forgive him.  Another handful of seed. Another flock of grateful birds.

The kids played all kinds of games.  Two little girls were skipping rope.  Three boys threw a ball.  Emily was on the other side of the playground swinging on a swing.  One of the boys missed the ball and it rolled over to where Emily was. She hopped off the swing and ran over to get the ball.  That’s when the man emerged out of the bushes and grabbed her.  No one heard her muffled scream.

No one except Sam.

Something in Sam snapped.  A rage that he had suppressed since the war fired inside him like an atomic explosion. He rushed across the park like a rifle bullet aiming for the man’s head.  People stood in stunned silence as an old man tackled the young man with the struggling little girl.  Forty years of pent-up anger cracked the man’s back as Emily broke free.  Sam’s fist repeated pounded the man’s face. “YOU. WILL. NOT. HARM. MY. GRANDDAUGHTER!!!!!”

The New York Police pulled Sam off before he could kill the attacker.  Sam limped over to a bench and began to openly weep.  All the pain he had felt since the war came pouring out into his wrinkled hands.  A burly Irish cop put his arm around him and said, “You did a good thing today. That man was a known pedophile. You probably saved that little girl’s life.”  Another man sat down on the bench and said, “It’s alright officer, I’ve got him.”

Sam’s son put his arm around his father and said, “Dad?”

Sam looked up, his eyes bloodshot, and asked, “Is she OK?”

Sam’s son, looking into the eyes of the man who he had hated for so many years, said, “Why don’t you ask her for yourself.”  All his anger faded away.

Emily walked over to the bench and said, “Thank you for saving my life, mister.”

Sam had saved his granddaughter Emily. And in the process, Sam saved himself.

Hungry pigeons flew into the sky as the buildings’ shadows cloaked the city. And as the sun began to sink into the western sky, two men and a little girl left the small city park and entered the promised land.