The little old lady who lives on the curve in the road

There is a stretch of road between San Luis and Colinas that we drive with some frequency. Not every week or every month even, but quite a few times in the course of a year. We had been warned that it is a particularly dangerous piece of road--lots of robberies. Part of the road is in pretty good condition and part is not. There are a couple of places on the bad part of the road where a curve requires a driver to slow way down, and thieves have been known to take advantage of that spot to ply their trade. We haven't had any trouble. Our car is not the kind that attracts much attention and we don't travel that road at night.

John was forced to stop there once when a truck blocked the road. The truck driver said he needed a ride up the hill. Scarey moment. It turned out that the truck really had broken down on the worst possible spot on the road and the driver needed a ride back up the hill to where he could get a cell phone signal to call for help.

Like I said, it is a road with a lot of curves and after driving it quite a few times, certain curves have begun to have a particular identity in my mind. The curve with the pretty fence, the curve with the school, the "be careful to not stop there" curve, for example. One curve I think of as "the house of the little old lady." The house is maybe closer to Colinas than San Luis, right before the road gets bad or the road gets better, depending on which direction you are driving. A tiny, elderly lady is almost always standing outside of the house which is part adobe- part stick and mud-part plastic tarp. Invariably, she is waving. Not the kind of wave that says "hello, I'm glad you are driving by my house," but the kind of wave that says, "stop and talk to me." I had always figured she was perhaps a bit senial. "Poor thing¨ I would think as we drove by.

Then, today in the paper, I saw the face of my tiny -little-old -lady -who -lives -on -the -curve- in -the- road. The picture showed an elderly lady like a thousand other elderly country women in Honduras-- short, thin, stocking cap on her head, face lined with a hundred wrinkles, a bundle of fire wood on her head, yet I knew it was her. A glance at the article proved me right. As it turns out, Doña Telma Angelina, 82, is the sole support of her invalid daughter, who has not walked for ten years. The article in the paper began like this: "Every time she hears a car coming by, she rushes out of her humble house to ask for money."--not because her mind has gone, not to entertain herself on a sunny day, but because she has no other recourse.

A nurse had become aware of Doña Telma's situation and called the newspaper. They sent a reporter, who told her story with the hope that people would respond to her need. I think people will. There are a lot of very generous Hondurans.

I don't tell the story because I feel guilty for not stopping to talk to Doña Telma. There was no particular reason that I should have understood just by seeing her wave. The story impresses me because it emphasizes the fact that everyone has a story. No one is just, "the little old lady who lives on the curve of the road." That is her place in my story, but it is not her story. Her own story is ever so much more eloquent than that.