Cleaning Lady

So I spent most of this morning under the I-35 bridge downtown. I was cleaning up trash that had been left by the homeless and the transients, the rebellious and delinquent teens, and the random passers-by who toss trash out their car windows as they drive by. There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about the stuff I was cleaning up; empty beer cases, plastic grocery sacks, and enough glass to make a picture window out of. What was remarkable about the experience was that as we were cleaning up the trash and whacking down the weeds, I could hear the traffic overhead. It was loud under there, all the cars whizzing by; and when the semi-trucks drove over, I thought the whole bridge might come down.

I also noticed how I could hear them, but not see them. And they could not see me. They could not see my church team and the volunteers from the youth groups who spent a hot and humid Saturday (the first Saturday of summer, no less) to clean the filth and overgrowth that had taken hold of the little corner of the Westside.

And most of them wouldn’t ever notice. People don’t ever notice things outside of there little bubble. They will never notice that you can finally use the sidewalk on 20th and Pennsylvania, never see that the kids who live in the area can play beyond their small, fenced-in yard without fear of what they are playing amongst, and never stop to think how lovely the street looks without all that overgrowth and trash.

They will never notice. But I will.