Tuesday morning the weather turned cold, and the City awoke to big white snow flakes floating to the ground. My good-sam mode kicked in and I decided to gift a homeless person a warm pair of wool blend tights. At the bottom of the 4th Street station, the very bottom, is where I, as previously reported, see the largest gatherings. [I’ve decided it must be one of the entrances to the underground life complex.] So on the way to my appointment I look across the tracks and platform, see a couple of carts and figure I will ‘gift’ on my return. I return. I step out of the train, and just 10 steps away, under the shelter of the stairs is a small Asian woman. She cannot be more than 4’6″ and is leaning forward on the pulled up handle of a suitcase, working with a pencil on a piece of paper. She is wearing quilted pants, in a shade of red with black trim, dusty, scuffed black boots and some sort of jacket. Her black hair is straight, she had on a hat, but I don’t remember the description. She is standing, marking with a pencil the top paper of a sheaf of papers. She is very intense. In addition to the suitcase in front of her, flanking her on her right and left side are two stacks of belongings. On the far side, the stack is a bit higher. On the near side, my side, the stack is only two items tall. The bottom item is square and about 15″ tall and sitting on that is a neatly tied white plastic bag about 12x 10×10. That all is so meticulously arranged, although she is clearly deeply grimed, strikes me. In the next nano seconds I make the following decisions: I wait for the subway train to close its doors and move on. Then I will approach her. However, the train is delayed. The doors don’t close and the train doesn’t move. A few seconds have passed and most every one else who disembarked when I did, have left. I was waiting because I didn’t want to make a show of gifting, I wanted to be circumspect. But nothing is happening and I am caught in this freeze frame. I decide to approach her, train and occupants or not. I move forward the 10 steps and three steps away I begin to say “Here are some war….” and I bend through my knees to place ‘my gift’ atop the white rectangle plastic bag. At the moment of my downward movement, she turns away from her ‘work on the paper’ and toward my intended destination at the same time letting loose with a screech the likes of which I have never heard. It was an enormous sound of terror and panic and the volume was larger than the space in which it was delivered. I froze once again, in my tracks. In that instant I was aware of the stillness of the train, the doors being open and all the occupants within witnessing what no one could possibly understand was happening. I wasn’t frightened, I was instantly struck by her panic and her flight or fight reaction. I realized that I so did not understand what made her tick and that my gesture was from her point of view 180 degrees from the one swimming around in my head. I closed my hand around the warm tights, unbent my knees and straightened myself. I walked away. At the other side of the stairs was one of those tall, black, round tidy trash receptors found on every train platform. I approached it and draped the tights over the edge, with the thought that someone might find them that way. I walked to the escalator. It was only as I was a few steps up the escalator that I realized the train was just pulling out.