What is PrevailingWind?

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 Mondays in Manila, Philippines arrived the same way as Mondays anywhere -- reluctantly. Morning chaos replaced the near deserted streets of Sunday as the masses, groggy from their day off, their escape from the tedium of earning a living, returned to the reality of daily life and survival.    I walked north on Mabini Street and approached the cross-street of Padre Faura. Traffic through the intersection on a normal day moved with slow fits and starts but today Jeepneys, taxies, trucks, and motorcycles jammed it to a stop.  Impatient drivers blew their horns, yelled curses, and raced their engines, as if their complaints would somehow break open the bottleneck. All the while, vendors zigzagged among the stalled traffic hawking newspapers, bottled water, snacks, and trinkets of all sorts to their trapped customers.  I joined a small group of pedestrians, standing on the corner of the intersection, waiting for a safe moment to cross. One brave soul stepped from the curb and led the rest of us on a crooked path between the gridlocked vehicles toward the other side. Exhaust fumes and the smell of overheated engines mixed with the heavy humidity of the morning and made my eyes burn. However, the jumbled hypnotic traffic-roar overwhelmed the senses and pushed aside any other thought.    As I stepped onto the sidewalk on the other side of the street, I saw an ice cream man pushing his cart along the side of the road.  In truth, I didn’t see him first. I saw the little girl. She wore a dingy, red dress, and beamed a wide toothless smile as only kids can do. She called to the ice cream man with a little squeak of a voice lost in the confusion and blast of the intersection.  The ice cream man didn’t seem to hear her small and weak voice at first. His concentration and countenance seemed intent on maneuvering his pushcart.  Though small, she danced after him until he saw her.  The man, a tattered poor man, worn old and thin from life on the streets, dressed in a too-large, drab-gray shirt with rolled up sleeves and patched trousers. He wore ancient cracked flip-flops dented heavy with the imprint of his feet. His face, furrowed, unshaven, and burned dark from the sun frowned as he pushed his battered cart. However, when he saw the little girl waving and calling for his attention, he stopped. His face broke into a genuine, broad smile, displaying broken and missing teeth...but she smiled back. Neither seemed to notice or care the other had no teeth.  Though his face, seasoned with age and his hair and sparse whiskers glittered with sprigs of grey, his eyes twinkled young with laughter and crinkled in the corners. He asked for her money.  She held out her tiny hand and opened her clenched fingers that hid a few small coins--hardly enough for an ice cream cone.   The man saw at once she had not enough for even the smallest cone and his smile froze as he debated his position for he was a poor man. The sign on his rundown cart that once displayed a bright advertisement had long ago faded and its wheels that once shined black and moved easily now fought him constantly. The ice cream man hesitated but a moment and then his smile continued. He accepted her coins as if plenty and then elegantly went about preparing for her a small cone.  While he worked, she danced in a circle, her hands to her face and she squealed as her bare feet skipped in delight.  Soon the ice cream man finished her cone and he bent over and presented it to her with the smile of a man, who for the moment seemed a child as well. Joy shined through the craggy, weather beaten face he wore.  She carefully took the cone, held it in her two hands and admired it for a moment. Then, amidst the horn-blowing, engine-roaring background, she licked it as if alone in a quiet garden surrounded by flowers and cooing birds. Her eyes and face beamed as she turned and walked toward a woman I suspected to be her mother who sold gum and cigarettes from a small box on the sidewalk.  The woman smiled with happiness toward the little girl in the red dress.  All of us, lucky enough to stop for a moment on that noisy Monday morning, who witnessed this unselfish act from the heart of a man on the edge of society, received a priceless gift.  I pray that more often I could recognize the opportunity to share my blessings and for a moment see through the eyes of a child as did the ice cream man.