A Nice Downtown Moment

Yesterday I was walking down a city street (in very hot weather) against three lanes of one-way traffic. Several cars were stopped at a stoplight. All but one went forward when the light changed. The other car started driving backward, at a pretty good clip, about a half-block back up the street. Suddenly the driver's window rolled down and a middle-aged Asian woman rolled her window down and yelled: "Hey! Where you going with that baby?"

She was yelling at a young black woman with an infant in her arms. The young woman looked startled. "What?"

As the black woman drew closer, the woman in the car lowered her voice. "Where are you going with that baby? You can't take it very far in this heat. Let me give you a ride."

I was really struck by the gesture. I like to think it was Midwestern generosity, but it was probably a generalized maternal instinct that might have happened anywhere. It made me happy.