Black History Month and the parade of beautiful faces

Some form of Black History Month exists in Canada, Senegal, the United Kingdom and countries around the world, including Ireland.

Thankfully, ours is not the only country to celebrate how ancestors of the African diaspora are part of what makes every nation great. February is Black History Month in the United States.

A few winters ago, I tucked into a window seat at the Starbucks at 200 S. Michigan Ave. The diversity that is our country walked by my window in the Chicago cold. During this first week of Black History Month, my thoughts return to that day.

An Asian man walked slowly by my plate-glass window tugging a small suitcase on wheels, curving slow figures on his amble, looking up and around, taking in the city. Others walked like they were on deadline.

I noticed their shoes. White shoes, red socks, trendy ankle boots, weathered loafers, knee boots, sneakers.

Some people were strapped to backpacks, urban hikers loaded down but hands-free, encased in fat parkas, heads floating above coils of bright scarves, shopping bags clutched to their chests, clung to like a treasure, like a collection of love letters.

A woman in a peacoat floated into my field of vision, her white terrier trotting behind in black booties, working his sniffing nose in curious circles, eyes darting.

The man wearing headphones didn’t notice this perky dog, his hands shoved into his army jacket, a white wire snaking into a pocket to a song or to a phone call, his faraway eyes focused on a faraway thing, a dream, perhaps, for which he was striving.

The world flowed past, clotting at the street corner as the pedestrian signal played its game of catch and release.

I noticed their faces. They were black and white and every hue of beautiful brown. Most faces were blank. Some women had made up their faces but not yet applied expressions. Some people seemed determined. Most seemed absent.

A young, delighted man aimed his elderly companion to the coffee shop door, both of his hands on her upper arm as she guided her wheeled walker toward the promise of lattes. He spoke into her ear, wisps of steam escaping from their animated smiles into the cold, silver air.

One day she’ll be gone, and he’ll remember this morning, holding her arm on this wide sidewalk where certain couples, clearly, were lovers. Something about how they held their gloved hands and moved beneath their clothes revealed this certain truth.

Some people wore their clothes, and for others, their clothes seemed to wear them.

A waif of a woman sported chunky boots; it’s a wonder she could walk without having to take frequent stops to rest her thin legs. And some hoods wreathed in such profusion of fur could have housed whole families of birds or, even, small children.

The fat man wore an open coat that couldn’t reach around the expanse of his continental belly; the woman whose head was verily imprisoned in a hockey helmet peddled her bike carefully through the crowd as one heading towards apocalypse.

Not everyone was in their own world. Besides the hand holders, there was the mother, red hair tamed in a schoolgirl braid, adjusting the blankets around what one presumed was the baby tucked in its sports stroller.

Others were alone. The dapper man in a fedora leaned against the rail of the patio, planters filled with frozen, dead plants.

Women in tights and furry boots plied through the crowds of hundreds of people — housed, unhoused, old, young, spry, and stumbling — making their way up and down this Michigan Avenue sidewalk in front of the window behind which I sat comfortably unnoticed eating oatmeal and sipping steaming peach tea.

Across the street plastered on the walls of the Art Institute, giant Andy Warhol prints of famous faces watched what I watched. Chairman Mao with blue eye shadow and rosy cheeks wore a particularly contented gaze. Marsha P. Johnson smiled broadly.

“It’s not given to everyone to blend into the multitude,” says Baudelaire, and maybe that was what most impressed Mao, each different person there on the sidewalk, every limp, every flash of color, every race, every uniqueness of style, a kind of freedom on parade.