About nine years ago — this would have been when my son Alex was about ten years old — we saw Clara for the first time. We were in the car, we had just turned off of Fiddlers Green and onto Governors Avenue and there she was, over to the left side of the road coming towards us.

It was cold outside and Clara was pushing her grocery cart against traffic, the way that bicyclists do, and the wheels of the cart were biting into the grey slush of the road. Alex saw her and he stopped talking. We drove another hundred yards or so before he spoke again.

“We’ve got to go back,” he said.

Now, I know I saw Clara — not really acknowledging her but seeing her the same way I saw the Burger King sign and I saw the Michelin store behind her. But Alex had locked in on her. He really saw her.

“We’ve got to go back,” he repeated.

“Why?”

Alex told me what he’d seen. That there was an old woman in the street. Everything she owned was in one grocery cart and it was cold outside. We had to go back. To help.

“Great idea,” I said magnanimously, as I mentally scanned what cash I had on me — hoping that I had something smaller than a twenty.

“No,” he corrected me. “We need to take her — home. To our house. To live.”

We kept driving and I told Alex how proud I was of him. I praised the great heart he had and told him of what a great kid he was. And then I gently explained how we could help. With a little bit of money.

“No. We need to take her home with us.”

And I explained all the reasons why we couldn’t do that. That the lady was a stranger. We couldn’t bring a stranger into our house, it wasn’t safe. We could help, sure, a little, but we —.

But Alex looked at me with focused eyes. “But Dad, she’s old. And it’s cold and we have that big guest room that no one is using and she can —. “

He kept talking and we kept driving. When we got to Walmart he was still talking — well, I was still  talking. Alex was anxiously trying to hurry us up. To get us back in the car and get rolling towards Governors Avenue.

“How about we get her some food while we’re here, huh? How about that?’

“No,” he said.

But I did it anyway. I picked out a few prepackaged sub sandwiches, some chips and some bottled water and I listened to Alex plead. And as I did, I understood that he didn’t want to bring this woman home the way you do a kitten, or a lost dog. She needed to come home with us to be part of us. To be a member of our family.

Why? It was simple. We had the space. We had a house that was warm and dry and there was plenty of food there. There was no reason to discuss it any further. We had resources that someone else didn’t. It was only fair.

We drove back to Governors. To the place we had seen her and she was gone. We  drove further down, through the side streets. Nothing. We looked inside of Burger King and the bus stop and then circled the entire loop again but could not find her.

“Okay,” I said. “I have an idea.”

Alex looked up at me as if there was nothing I could have done to disappoint him more. We pulled into the homeless shelter that was on Governors Avenue and I parked the car. We walked inside and told the lady at the desk who we were and who we had had seen and that we wanted to get this food to her.

The woman knew exactly who I was referring to and told us her name was Clara. Clara had been in and out of the shelter many times. She had been offered job opportunities and even an apartment but something always happened. The woman at the desk told Alex how proud she was of him wanting to take Clara home. But that we had to be safe and that there were other ways to help.

And Alex, silent, looked up at the both of us with frustrated eyes. We could show him statistics, photographs, evidence, all day long and it didn’t matter. Here were the only facts that did. There was a woman that needed help. We can help. Done.

We left the food at the shelter — she didn’t know if Clara would be in but she would see it went to good use — and we walked back out to the car.

“Feel better?”

“No.” And he didn’t.

We saw Clara a few more times after that. And then we didn’t see her again.

That was nine years ago. And Alex? Well, he’s nineteen now. And he still has a gentle heart and is a sensitive, caring kid. But he has that filter now about things such as this. The ones we all have.

Now, there was no way that Clara could have come home with us. Absolutely not. I wouldn’t jeopardize the safety of my family, I know that. Everyone knows that. It would never have happened.

But still —. There’s something so —. So absolutely pure about putting what we should do — ahead of what we can do. And instead of finding a way to nurture that better in Alex, I somewhat yanked it out of him.

And I feel bad about that.