Last week, as I was walking home from the gym, I ran into a familiar face weathering the snowstorm. Michael, wearing his same faded khaki jumpsuit and neon orange vest, was walking down Montana Avenue armed with his snow shovel and a beaming smile. Michael, a Chicago native, does landscaping for my neighbor’s properties around the city. He struck up a conversation with me about six months ago when I was sitting on my stoop playing guitar. We’ve been buddies ever since. As we began walking down the street Michael asked if he could shovel our snow for free (a request in which I am too prideful to allow). After he broke through my chorus of “no’s,” I ultimately caved and told him that I’d buy him breakfast in return.

After settling our business agreement, we walked over to Clarke’s on Lincoln Ave. We sat down for a cup of coffee and ordered what could’ve been a second Thanksgiving feast. The jackets had been taken off, food ordered, and coffee sugared, and it was finally time to do the one thing that I’ve been longing to do since the first day I met Michael six months ago– hear his story.

You can tell from a person’s eyes if they’ve truly seen hardship, and Michael’s, as he retraced his last 50 years, held a vacancy I’ve only witnessed a handful of times. Like the blend of a sad country song with a gospel hymn, Michael’s stories bore devastating losses and addictions with hints of hope and joy hidden in the cracks.

One story that stuck with me is when Michael was homeless with a $1.86 cents is his pocket (11 cents less than our daily coffee at Starbucks). He was walking through the Pilson neighborhood in Chicago– probably wearing that same khaki jumpsuit with his hands in his pockets, his thumbs sticking out, and also wearing a somber look on his face. He walked by a construction site and saw a bunch of men trying to knock down a wall with a sledgehammer. Determined, he went up to the construction manager and asked if he could help. Wielding his weapon of choice, he laid a few solid swings, and the wall that 10 men were struggling to break the entire day came crumbling down. As the sun began to set, the construction manager went up to Michael and placed a $100 bill in his hand (Michael told me that he thought he was supposed to go get change for it to give back to his new boss) and told him he wanted to see him back tomorrow.

Why does this story stick? I actually know who the construction manager is, and know him to be a man who is very rough around the edges. I later learned that this man not only gave him a job, but an apartment too. How humbling is it when our initial perspective of someone is totally turned on its head?