Then a seventeen-year-old girl pushing two babies through freezing rain stopped.
You had almost nothing, Walter wrote, and somehow that did not make you blind to someone else’s difficulty.
He told me that he used the ten dollars at the diner across the street, where he ordered coffee, soup, and toast, then sat by a window for nearly two hours thinking about what had happened.
The next morning, he called his son.
That phone call did not immediately repair their relationship, but it began a conversation that continued for months and eventually brought them back into each other’s lives.
Walter returned home.
He restarted his business involvement.
More importantly, he began thinking differently about what money was meant to do.
Several years later, he established an educational assistance program for young single parents who were trying to complete school while caring for children, providing help with transportation, childcare, textbooks, rent, and other ordinary expenses that could determine whether someone continued or gave up.
