The Old Monk and an Apple

As many of you know, our family lives in a brownstone that is owned by a Buddhist church. For most of the year, we are the only tenant, and the house is overrun with the minister, his sisters, parishioners, and students of the religion. There is one monk, we call him, the “Old Monk” (for obvious reasons). He used to sit in a chair at the landing below our staircase and pray. We never could tell whether to acknowledge him or to let him go on praying, so, for a long time, we walked by him without ever speaking. Over time, we have attempted some conversation with him. I say ‘attempted’ because he doesn’t know a lick of English. Still, we got to like the guy, an eccentric old monk wandering the building.

Lately, he’s stopped going to the chair at the bottom of our landing. I don’t know why—perhaps his bones are getting old. He lives on the first floor, and his chair is on the third floor, so perhaps his age is preventing him from making it up those two extra flights. As it is, he has a hell of a time making it up the first flight. So, instead of sitting on the third floor, he stands at the top of the first landing. And every time I pass him by with Reilly, I feel obliged to stop, since he just loves the baby. He loves to pinch her cheeks and touch her face, which Theresa downstairs says is a great blessing. I don’t see it that way. I see it as an old man with dirty hands touching the face of my baby.

It’s gotten to the point now that I hate coming home, because he is always there, and there is no way for me to get past him without the compulsory stop and pinch. It’s hard because sometimes all a guy wants to do after a long day at work and an annoying pickup at daycare, is to get up to his apartment and kick off his work shoes. For those in suburbia, imagine coming home from work to find your neighbor sitting on your porch. EVERY TIME you come home. Shawn takes another angle on this. She says he’s just a sweet, old, lonely man who has nothing to do all day except wander the hallway outside his apartment, and so he waits all day for Reilly because it gives him a little human contact.

This past Sunday, we ran into the Old Monk downstairs as we were leaving the apartment. He went to the Holy Food Box and pulled out an apple. He then handed the apple to Reilly. Never mind that Reilly is incapable of holding an apple. Or of eating one. The old man wanted to give her a holy apple, and so he did. Shawn took it on Reilly’s behalf and I ushered our family out of that weird situation and into the Sunday sunshine.

Later that afternoon, as I sat outside of Shawn’s salon, Avalon, waiting for her appointment to end, Reilly started to get bored and cranky. I reached inside her diaper bag for a toy, and instead pulled out the apple. What the heck, I thought. I gave Reilly the apple. She grabbed it.

She studied it.

And to my amazement, she stuck it in her mouth.

And to my great surprise, I found myself silently thanking the Old Monk for giving Reilly her first apple, and just a few moments of joy.