This is a view from behind my window – a dumpster behind my window, with ‘SMILE’ painted on it by some ironic/kind prankster.

I noticed the pretty well dressed elderly couple grouting through our dumpster. I was about to go on, turning away from the window and just feeling sad for them, but this time seeing the scene with the couple in such sad situation, and ‘smile’, made me stay on the window and peek some more, figuring out my own feelings.

It was a couple, whom seeing passing by on a street, one would think of them as a respectable elderly couple. I realized that that was what had touched me about the scene. So far I had learned to separate myself from people of such poverty. I knew they existed, yet I believed if I did not think myself into such position, I would less likely happen to ever find myself in such position.

During a Summer in Greensboro (NC, USA), Tony took me to library every day so I could access internet and get to do research on a computer. At lunch breaks I left the over conditioned library to warm up in the sun and have my lunch bagel and talk to the new friends I had made at the library – most of whom were homeless. Although at times they asked me for few quarters and if I had few, I gave them, but most of the time we actually spent being involved in a conversation, ..of my life in Estonia and USA, ..of how they had ended up in the situation they were in, ..of their wealthy relatives in South Africa, ..Of anything we had on mind besides money. What I learned, was how easily life can give You such path.

Most of the times homeless or dumpster-people are easy to be ignored – they look disgusting, they reek, and simply seem as a totally different world. But the more one sees, how ‘normal’ they may appear, the more it makes realize, how lucky one is to not to have to go through dumpsters to find ways to get enough for food.

Not often, but it happens, that I thank God/Faith for not having set such path for me or my family. Thought of not having enough to support my closest ones enough to keep them from getting anything from dumpsters, makes me too sad to let it be an option.

As of the photo. It is no way to make fun over them or the situation and I blurred them out of the photo, to focus on the ‘smile’. Although a sad situation, I felt hopeful thinking myself, that there has got to be something in all the sad thoughts, that would give a reason for a smile, both, for me, and more so for them.

Ranno