Squat, dark and foreign looking, she leans close to plowed snow piles to pull a small boy by the hand along the narrow highway in the mountains of Colorado hoping to avoid fast moving pickups and semis splattering slush
A paper sack hanging off her other arm, she might be on her way to the food pantry or leaving him at a babysitter while she cleans toilets at the ski lodge
I slow down, swing wide – even then, the young mother sweeps him behind her body against the snowbank until I drive by
She may be one of the lucky ones the generous townspeople will present with a one-way bus ticket downhill to the big city, free of charge, via their Greyhound Ministry
In this country that brags of greatness, in this world preachers say God has made for us all, surely, life was not meant to be so