Homeless Is Where The Heart Is

Task 39, October 4 to October 10

"Humanity cannot bear much reality". T.S. Eliot

For most of my adult life I lived in a city--a BIG city. As in: home to millions of people. I loved my adopted city, but as with all major metropolises it has (not unlike its citizenry) its secrets, its insecruities and its baggage--and the most glaring, the most problematic, is its homeless.

There are many reasons that people live on the street, and since I have absolutely no bona fides in the field, I am not going to try and figure out the WHY of it all, which is probably why I ignored the problem for so long.

But one day I came home from work and a man was sleeping in the thin median of grass between the sidewalk in front of my house and the street. He was swaddled in a filthy blanket, curled up on his side, and next to him were several plastic bags filled to the brim with...stuff.

My wife walked outside and said, "honey, you have to do something..." and I sighed because that wasn't the first time she'd uttered that phrase, and usually whatever I do about whatever it is that she wants me to do something about isn't done in the way she wants it done, and I get an earful...

So I hesitantly walked over and stared at the man wrapped in a blanket. What should I do? I decided that I wasn't going to rile him so I called 911. The dispatcher said that someone would come by, and a half hour later a blue Kia pulled up and a young woman got out, and without any fear or trepidation walked over to the man, who by the way had not move a muscle since I first saw him, and she knelt down, woke him and started to speak to him.

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They talked for a bit. I thought about going back into the house and close the door on the whole event, but I didn't.

After 20 minutes or so the woman came over to me. She said that her name was Helen and she worked at a shelter, St. Anne's, and she said that the man on the ground said his name was LeVon.

It turned out that there was another person in the Kia, a slightly older woman. Eventually the two of them help LeVon to his feet, and they gathered his bags, and he limped to the car still wrapped in the blanket.

I followed them to the Kia. Helen turned to me and said that LeVon had given her permission to take him to St. Anne's. He could spend the night there, she explained.

They left. I sat down with a beer and thought about it.

A couple of days later I went down to St. Anne's Shelter. It was a nondescript building in a nondescript part of town. I walked inside. The receptionist stared at me but didn't say anything. Above a couch was a cork board, and tacked to the board were some flyers. I went over and read one. BE A VOLUNTEER! it said. In smaller letters was the ask: they needed volunteers to help hand out box lunches on Sunday mornings.

I asked the receptionist if I could sign up to volunteer. She handed me a clipboard and I filled it out, then I went home. Someone from the shelter called me later and we talked about volunteering, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in the cold at 6am in front of St. Anne's. There were dozens of volunteers hustling around; some were bone tired because they had volunteered to come in at 4am and put together the bags of food that were to be handed out. A couple of tables were covered and set out. We put the bags of food on the table along with an urn of coffee and plastic bottles of water. Within minutes homeless men, women and children, in pairs, singly or as a group, appeared out of the morning mist.

I had expected to see a lot of older men in tattered clothes, and of course there were a number who fit that description, but there were 20-somethings in jeans and tee shirts; grown men in clean clothes; a lot of them had cell phones, which surprised me, and there were a fair number of dogs. What tore at me were the children. I wasn't expecting to see young children... There wasn't much talking.

The rest of the morning was a blur. I helped make coffee, hand out the lunches, clean up the area...the parish pastor came by and greeted each person with a handshake and a hand on the shoulder.

I left around noon. As I drove home I tried to categorize the experience--fit it into my body of work, but I was very conflicted...should I feel good about myself? After all, I was going home to eat from my refrigerator and sleep in my bed...

I determined that conflicted or not, I would return to do it again. And I did. Because it's better to do something than nothing at all.

TASK:

Volunteer! Work for a day in a shelter. Man a suicide line or help out at an animal shelter, clean up a local park, tutor some homeless kids, work the info desk at a hospital. Anything.

Scout it out. Sign yourself up. Get busy.