Drifting Out of Summer

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July—

Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
End poem, Lewis Carroll

   
We are coming down to the end days of summer. Schools started back in session today here in our town. Warren and I caught a ballgame last night in Columbus (the Indians’ Triple A farm team) and it grew cool enough during the evening that I slipped on a cotton sweater. The rudbeckia bed is going to seed; each day there are fewer and fewer bees and more and more finches.

The nights are cooler, the mornings are sharper, the day temperatures are softer. There are fewer cicadas during the day and fewer katydids at night. The crickets, however, have taken their place in the chorus.

Drifting out of summer. Substitute “August” for July in Carroll’s poem and that would capture the feel of the days.

Canning and freezing operations have started up on the weekends in the kitchen. Last Sunday I canned seven pints of salsa and eleven pints of tomatoes. It’s not August until you spend the whole day standing in your kitchen cannery with steam everywhere. There are still many, many tomatoes in the garden; the peppers are also finally starting to turn. 

The first high school football game is this Friday. We are just close enough to our local high school that you can hear the marching band, faintly, during practice. Come Friday night, the sky will be lit up to the west when they turn on the field lights.

Drifting out of summer.

On the home front, the summer has been squished and packed with many projects and events. Older family members have had medical issues needing attention; I’ve been accompanying my aunt Ginger to appointments. As she nears her 82nd birthday this fall, she looks more and more like her mother, my beloved Grandma Skatzes, so I am feeling perhaps even more strongly the already strong family bonds that connect us.

The “children” in the household have shifted all summer long. Sam headed back west earlier this month. He resumes school in September and just landed a job with a Portland area farm market. Sam has shown a lot of interest in local, sustainable food sources, so this may be an ideal fit for him. Elizabeth is back from her summer travels and work and will soon start the every other weekend routine with us as she heads into her final year of high school. We have even seen a fair amount of David, who went back to college this week.  

And Amy moved in with us last week.

Amy had been living on the edge of homelessness for a long time. Her father finally ordered her out of his apartment and she moved into an overcrowded house where she was sharing a room with two others and where the owner of the house made it clear Amy was not welcome. I kept saying, “We have a room for you,” and she kept resisting, trying to make things work out where she was. Then Warren and I came home after work one day last week and he said “that’s Amy’s car.”

There she was, parked in front of our house, curled up on the front seat sobbing. She was the one who made the decision to leave, as opposed to being tossed out, but it was a hard decision all the same. All of her worldly goods (except those she had moved out previously and were stored elsewhere with safe families) were in the back seat of her car.

We carried her clothes and her boxes into the house. Amy was teary and upset for the first hour, but slowly calmed down and starting putting her new room to rights. The first thing she did was hang her dream catcher over her bed. I hope it catches all of her bad dreams. She had brought a few stuffed animals with her – small, well-worn, well-loved ones – and later I saw them on the neatly made bed, tucked in by the pillows. I think that broke my heart more than anything else: at that moment she was just a little girl with no roof over her head.

But she has one now, just in time for the change in seasons. And I am grateful beyond words that we have a roof that we could share with her.

Drifting out of summer. It’s been a bittersweet time. I miss my three Oregon children, happy as I am that they are all stable and happy out there. Shepherding family members through the medical world is a poignant reminder of how short the time is growing that we have with one another. Watching Amy calming down and putting her life back together is bittersweet. She has been drifting long enough and could use some change.

Drifting out of summer. May all of our boats come back into the harbor for the winter, snug against the storms.

Rainy Day Notes on Hard Times

Monday
As I start writing this post longhand, I am sitting at the window counter of the coffee shop at the corner of William and Sandusky Streets in downtown Delaware. It is a chill day and a cold rain is just starting to fall.

A gray, cold day. Cold and gray enough that headlights are on and the neon lights in the coffee shop's window glow into the gloom.

The Great Recession is weighing heavily on my mind today. I know a family - more than one, in fact - who cannot put a Thanksgiving meal on their table this year without other family members stepping up to help.

The Great Recession continues to chew away at this community. Before coming here to meet up with a friend, I was home baking for tonight's legal clinic. Back home it smells like cinnamon and warm baked goods. We'll exceed 200 clients tonight, with one more month yet to go in 2010. Our previous high was 178 clients in 12 months; with a canceled clinic in February, we will far exceed that number in only 11 months this year.

A story today in The Columbus Dispatch reported that one in seven Ohio families is now without adequate means to feed themselves. Our state just broke into the "top 10" states for hunger.

Now there's something to brag about.

Another story in the same edition reports that the incoming Republican Ohio senate leader has told the public schools to "expect deep cuts" in the upcoming budget. (This is the same party that, when ordered by the Ohio Supreme Court to fix the school funding system after the Court found it to be unconstitutional, refused to comply.)

Great. Now we will have hungry children who won't be able to read.

All over Ohio, demands on social welfare agencies - homeless shelters, food banks, free clinics, community mental health centers - are rising. In Columbus, the shelters were full by early November and winter hasn't even started in earnest here yet.

My good friend Judy and I traded thoughts earlier today about these hard times. In talking about the grassroots programs that are trying to desperately patch the holes in the social fabric of this town, Judy wrote, "I think we are on the right track with IFLS, Grace clinic, U.M.W. blanket fund, P.I.N., etc."

I replied, "I think we're going to need a whole lot more IFLS, Grace Clinic, UMW Blanket fund, PIN, etc. in the months and years to come."

Judy responded, "sign me up," then quoted Margaret Mead. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

(Did I mention that Judy is a really good person as well as a really good friend?)

I offered up a quote from Deborah Stone, who wrote a very powerful book, The Samaritan's Dilemma, about the shift in our national culture from "what can we as a people do to conquer social ills" to "I have mine and it's not my responsibility that you don't have yours." Stone wrote:

When government permits such devastating conditions [such as hunger and homelessness] to persist, when it doesn't use every means at its disposal to help, when it models callousness and counsels its citizens not to feel badly about the suffering of others, it destroys the two most important qualities of a democratic citizenry: the desire to make life better for everyone and the will to take action.

The rain has picked up. The wind is chiller. I am sitting with my feet at the window and I can feel the cold radiate through the thick glass.

There are people in this town - my town - who are going without and doing without. There are people in my life - people I know - who are hungry and about to be homeless. There are others in my life - real people, not faceless statistics - who are stretching hard to keep the lights on and food on their tables.

We are about to enter the holiday season. While I dislike the commercial excesses of this time of year, I nonetheless concur with Fred, the nephew in A Christmas Carol:

There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest.  But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.  And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

Poverty in nineteenth century England ate at Charles Dickens and he frequently wrote about the debilitating social cost of hunger and homelessness and callousness. A Christmas Carol is particularly appropriate this year as the Great Recession grinds on and more and more analysts, even those of a more conservative bent, are starting to recognize that it is not just a "market correction" and that these hard times may well be the "new normal" for the next decade or more. As our government at state and national levels turns it back on the great need in this country, the words of the ghost of Jacob Marley may come to haunt us. Replying to Scrooge's comment that Marley always was good at business, the ghost wailed:

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.  "Mankind was my business.  The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.  The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

After the recent election, I wrote "and after all the shouting stops, then what? For those of us who serve (paid or unpaid) those without voices - the homeless, the hungry, the ill, the unemployed, the disenfranchised, the young, the old, our friends and neighbors - the people of this country whom both parties have abandoned - the results this week just mean we go right on trying to mend the torn social fabric of our communities."

That's what so many of us do, including many who have less than I do and yet feel compelled to do everything they can. Regardless of religious beliefs, so many of us have taken to heart the words of John Wesley:

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

(Thank you, Judy, for reminding me.)

It's a cold, gray day out there. It's colder and grayer if your hours have been cut at work. It's colder and grayer if the foreclosure notice is taped to the door. It's colder and grayer if you're hungry and you need to save the only food in the house for when everyone is gathered around the supper table.

Tuesday Postscript

Our free monthly legal clinic was last night. It was a cold, rainy night as the weather from earlier in the afternoon continued on into the evening. Our numbers were down. All the same, we quietly passed the 200 mark for 2010 clients.

Today, the sun is shining, the air is gentler. Walking to a late morning appointment, I realize I have dressed too warmly.

This morning there was an article in The Columbus Dispatch about suburban school districts in the greater Columbus area seeing a sharp increase in students qualifying for reduced or free lunches. One commentator noted "this information is really striking to them. It shows that this is a shared issue."

A shared issue? I'll say.

I worry about being a one-note band in this blog, that note being the horrific impact of the Great Recession on our communities. On the other hand, I cannot pretend there aren't those in my town, in my circle of friends, who are increasingly in need of help. Oh, I have other post topics lined up, some even half written, but this one moved to the front of the line by virtue of yesterday's and today's newspaper.

The only reason I have not experienced hunger or homelessness is because of the network of family and friends who have helped me. I have gone through many low spots in my life, but those are not two of them, and for that I am grateful.

As long as elected officials on both sides of the aisle refuse to support the least of us, the burden falls all the more heavily on the rest of us to make sure there are blankets and food and warmth and shelter for all.

Marley had it right: the common welfare is the business of us all.

The View From My Soapbox: Homelessness

Posts sometime kick around in my head (and my heart) for a long time before they see the light of day. This one has been percolating for several weeks and finally rose to the surface courtesy of my friend WP, who blogs at iamtheworkingpoor.

WP recently wrote about homelessness hitting her in the face at her job at a grocery store. She wrote: A young girl approached the counter and asked if she could borrow my phone to call her daddy. As soon as she got that first sentence out she burst into tears. She said she was fourteen years old and her mother had just kicked her out and she was scared. WP went on to remind us to keep our compassion "well exercised."

I commented to WP that often we don't see homelessness for what it is - the breaking of the safety net, or, as I am coming to believe more fervently every day, the breaking of the social contract between We the People and I the Individual.

We think homelessness doesn't happen "here" - "here" being where we happen to live. We think (and hope) that homelessness only happens in big cities, and then mostly to folks who are alcoholics or drug addicts or just plain irresponsible.

But it does happen here. Homelessness means bunking on your sister's couch because you have nowhere else to go, and then praying that she and her husband don't start arguing about "how long is your brother going to be here?" It is swallowing your pride and moving into your old bedroom back home, even if you are in your 40s or 50s, and being treated like a kid again by your folks. It is that young girl calling her dad, telling him "mom kicked me out" and desperately hoping that dad doesn't say "tough luck."

Homeless is all around us. Many of us are not even a few paychecks away, but one paycheck, or one last chance with the spouse, or one more reduction of hours at work, or one more night hoping your friends don't get tired of you couch surfing at their apartment.

Eight years ago this month, when I lived in our downtown, I had a brief encounter with local homelessness when my landlords discovered some food, clothes, and a lightweight sleeping bag tucked into a corner of a low parapet on the roof of the building next door. I connected the dots and realized the squatter was probably the young man - a kid really, maybe 19, maybe 20 - who I started seeing around the area constantly. He would say "hi" in a shy voice if we passed one another, but mostly he would give me these wide-eyed stares that I couldn't quite fathom.

My landlords notified the police, not to arrest the kid, but to talk to him and to find a different solution. If I remember, the kid moved on before that happened, obviously aware that his "home" had been discovered.

I kept thinking about the kid. He was very young, very thin, and somewhat haunted looking, but not desperate looking, not dangerous looking. Maybe he was just a kid without many options, or without any options at all, so he was living on cold stew and pop and hoping something broke his way.

I talked about what happened with a number of friends. We dissected the situation with great concern. One friend said the squatter should have been "more responsible" and planned his life better.(Silly me. Here I was worried about the kid sleeping out on the rooftop as winter approached.) Most were appalled and concerned. All of us did nothing more than talk.

Four years after my brush with the rooftop dweller, I had a second and closer encounter with homelessness. Sam's then high school girlfriend showed up at our back door one evening, soaked to the skin, having ran over a mile to our house in a driving icy rain from her dad's house, which she fled at the height of an argument that got physical. I never hesitated when she asked if she could come in and get warm. Within 30 minutes, she had a hot shower, dry clothes, and a warm meal. Amy ended up staying with us for the next ten days, and has stayed in our hearts and lives ever since.

By the time Amy showed up on my doorstep, I was not the same person who intellectualized but did not act when I encountered the rooftop dweller. Echoing Wilma Mankiller, I am the woman who lived before and the woman who lives afterwards. If the young man were camped out today on a nearby roof, I'd like to think I would take action and at least try to help and link him to services rather than speculate in a vacuum why he is in dire straits.

As I sit inside today typing, I reflect that I am blessed to have a roof over my head, sharing Warren's home with him. My boys, far flung though they be, also have shelter. At low points, though, when I am stressing over tighter dollars and the Great Recession, I lie awake and rearrange the rooms in this house as I puzzle over scenarios of "what if this or that child of his/mine moved back?" (During my illness, I did much the same thing with regard to my own housing, which at that time included a teenage Sam. I was grateful then (and still am) I had alternative housing resources, and grateful then (and still am) I never had to use them.)

I recently ranted to a colleague, in response to his query about a minor point: There are people homeless (or almost) and hungry (definitely, not almost) and without hope in Delaware. We see them monthly at our legal clinic and Delaware's food pantry; we see them weekly at our community free store and free medical clinic. At a national level, we have millions (millions!) who live below the poverty level (1 in 5 children, by the way, lives in poverty), are without health care, are without work, are losing their homes to foreclosure (well, until Bank of America took the generous step of suspending foreclosures upon the disclosure that the paperwork was WRONG). And we have to worry about [this minor point]? (I admit it: my colleague had caught me at the end of a long, discouraging day.)

My rant to my colleague aside, these are hard times and more and more of us are doing without. To borrow from WP, keep your compassion well exercised because you will need it. Sometimes you have to act. Time is precious and all the discussions in the world will not help the rooftop dweller or the crying teenager. To quote my favorite minister, it's very simple. Share. If you have, give.