This afternoon while I was walking Arabella around in her stroller, desperately trying to get her to go to sleep, a beggar approached me. Here the people who beg, dig through the dumpsters and sell what they find at the weekly flea market, (and sometimes pull of pretty ingenious scams) are called "gitanos" or gypsies. Anyway, she came up to me, as friendly as could be, smiling a big toothy grin, and told me that she had a couple babies too and asked if I'd give her some money. She seemed like a nice enough person, but I had left my purse in the café, so I apologized and explained that I didn't have anything on me.
These pictures have nothing to do with the story... They are of our outing this past weekend.Now you know that's never the end of it, and I knew it wouldn't be, but I was being completely honest. I didn't have anything to give her. She then asked if maybe I could give her a few diapers. I thought this was pretty clever. It also showed that she was being sincere about her little ones at home, but that's not very surprising. I always feel terrible for these little children that are born into a life of begging, scavenging and scamming.
When I told her that I used cloth diapers, she looked at me as if I were a big fat liar. Then she looked at Arabella's bum, just to check it out for herself. She said "cloth diapers? Like the old-fashioned ones??" I nodded. She seemed pretty curious, but at the same time cautious, like I was just trying to get out of giving her the diapers. Then she said, "So what do you do, wash them yourself?" and made the motion like she was washing diapers on a washing board. I smiled at her and told her, yes, that I washed them myself... in the washing machine. "And do you save a lot of money that way?" she asked. I said yes (and if I weren't such a diaper junkie I'd save a lot more!).
Then she looked at me, smiled and walked away. But in that last moment before she left, I swear to god, it was as if there was a sort of kinship between us - as if we were on the same wave-length. I thought I even caught a touch of pity in her eye, like she was thinking "Poor girl's worse off than me if she needs to be using cloth diapers".
