Bouncing back
Finding resilience where I least expect it
It’s hard to “bounce back” after I spend time volunteering at a community center, where I see and feel up close and personal the struggle and pain of those who live on the margins of society. It’s safe to say that everyone who comes in to this place, lives below the poverty level for reasons that may be as complicated as the history of this country or as simple as the bad luck of being born into poverty, into the wrong zip code, or with a physical or mental disability. Addiction, which could come before poverty, often, too often, follows it. Some of the faces I see look very young to me, trying to hide their vulnerability under swagger; others look much older than they actually are.
Not everyone here is homeless, but some are and others have been in the not-distant past. In the summer, when navigating outside was a little easier, one said he was living as a ‘nomad’, a euphemism for his current situation. Others have a place to sleep - a shelter, or maybe a church - but they need to move on in the morning. If they’re lucky, they get help with housing and can lease a lower-rent apartment, a Section 8 housing building. I learned these apartments mostly have heat, but not always. The buildings are sometimes secure, but not always. Doors get propped open. Lights don’t get fixed. Plumbing doesn’t always work. The laundry rooms aren’t safe. There is drug dealing on the corner, maybe inside too. Some rules seem almost made to get you evicted, to get someone new in who can pay more. Hearing all this, seeing this, it feels bleak. Sometimes hopeless.
And yet.
E, who is a grandmother, has a looming crisis with her baby granddaughter but offers to get up and get me a coffee so I can read an article someone has just handed me. I’ve brought warm fleece scarves today, last week it was gloves and socks. I walk outside where an overflow lunch crowd on this chilly day spills over into a covered area with heat lamps and I offer one to Christine, (not her real name), a woman who is a regular there, especially for the warm food offered free at lunch. I know won’t go in and ask for one. She is always cold; her clothes and coat are too thin for winter and it’s barely 35 degrees mid-day with a sharp north wind. She can’t choose which scarf to take.
“You know,” I say, “you could keep both if you want to give one to a friend. We can make more. Well, my friend can make more - I sure can’t sew!” She looks up at me, stunned, and shakes her head vigorously.
“Oh no,” she says, “I’d never take two; Someone else needs it more than me.” She is not sure she deserves one, I know this. We’ve talked before; she has been looking for a job for so long. I tell her over and over that she deserves one and I can see she doesn’t believe me. So this day I loosely wrapped the rose-colored scarf her neck and tell her my friend would be happy it found a good home.
Another volunteer rubs my shoulder as she walks by; she’s giving manicures today. She comes in even though her arthritis pain is worse in this cold, and her hip is acting up. Someone else told me this. She’s always cheerful, a sweet smile on her face, neat white hair. I think she told me she was 80 - but I think she looks much younger. It’s her smile. I watch her focus on each person, listening intently to every story she hears as she rubs lotion on hands and trims jagged nails, both men and women. Touch. Laughter. Good medicine.
When I get down to my writing work after lunch in the library and look at what Charles has brought in, I ask if he will read me one of his pieces. He once was an actor, he tells me this time. Ahhh, it all makes sense now, what I’ve seen when our group reads pieces aloud. His sense of the dramatic, his arms and hands commanding the room. He stands up and does his preparatory movement to get in the zone. His essays and poems are expansive, about the state of the world, a city block, an incident he remembers and what it means, about history, about cannabis as medicine, the reasons for homelessness, and the cost of racism. C shows me a poem about the history of how women have been controlled and how it still happens. He could bring a house down when he is reading his work; he is that good. This time though, mid-essay, he wheezes sharply, coughs and I jump up to get him water. “No,” he says. “It was just too much today.” Sometimes his breathing is bad he explains. It’s his lungs. I feel guilty I had asked him to read, knowing he’d put everything into it, a performance. He brought out his inhaler and had to rest. He leaves and comes back in five minutes. I learn he has diabetes, but can’t usually afford the insulin, so he’s on another program. On other days, he is full of energy. He religiously feeds all the birds in the pacy grass cement backyard along the freeway.
This day, he looks at me and says he’s glad to see I don’t look so tired today. (I’d been sick, though I never said that.). So I guess I look like I’m feeling better. Charles tells me to take care of myself, and he means it. It’s not a throwaway line. Life is fragile.
Just before I started the writing time, E came in to ask a big favor, she’s been working up to it, I can see that. She needs a ride to the bus station at 5:30 in the morning in two days; she has to take her six-month-old granddaughter on the 10-hour bus ride back to her larger family in South Dakota. This child, rescued by her grandmother in a crisis four months ago when the mother (E’s daughter) couldn’t care for her, will rejoin the community at the reservation. E will bring her there, even though the baby’s mother still can’t take her; other family will step in. I take this in as E starts explaining why she needs a ride even though it isn’t far because she’ll bring the baby’s clothes, her diapers, the formula, everything she’ll need. I stop her.
”Of course you need a ride,” I say to her long explanation.“It will be a long day for you both, You couldn’t possibly carry all that! I’ve hauled baby gear - it’s too much!” Relief passes over her face. It all weighs too much, and not just the gear. I think of all the times she’s probably been in a position where she has to ask for help. I think of the sense of entitlement that I see or hear from so many who didn’t grow up as E did - going without.
It’s still dark when we picked her up; my husband offered to drive. I get out to wait and notice that the two main lights by the entryway are both burned out; it’s at the edge of downtown, off a busy street, but a dark corner. E tells me they’ve turned off the electricity now for two days because the space heaters used when the furnace went out in the building were increasing the electric bills too much. The renters don’t pay for utilities, but they don’t always get them either. When I called her the night before the bus ride to check on details, she had walked to a laundromat with the baby’s clothes. Her granddaughter. Helping to put her car seat in the back, I peeked under the blanket draped over her. Her little eyes were wide, bright. She was quiet, but not sleepy, even though it wasn’t six yet, and till dark. I rubbed my pinky finger against her soft cheek and wished her everything good. Her grandma was so proud of her, E, whose dark eyes are mirrored in this little face with its fringe of dark hair.
When I first started volunteering before I knew E, she talked about the death of another grandchild, only seven. it haunts her. She has lost so much already, including three of her own children. On another week, she shares a short but powerful verse about her previous addiction; she’s been sober for seventeen years, even when others around her have tried to pull her back in. Even family. When I baked cookies and brought some in, I gave her a small bag and she gave them all away and forgot to take one for herself. Over coffee, there, we’ve talked about how her son is hurting now that he’s separated from his young daughter after his girlfriend left him. We talk about make-up; she thinks I should wear blue eye-shadow to bring out my eye color.
At the bus stop, I ask if a driver can help her with all of her things, the huge Costco box of diapers, the big stroller, the car seat carrier, and the two suitcases. I wish I could go with her, and make sure they are both safe, and that they get that ride when they arrive at the reservation. She said there’s no problem. There are at least three people who could get them. I don’t pretend I have any answers or that any care and love for this baby is better than what she will get from her family there, even if her mother is gone. E will go back to see her in May, that’s not long. I will probably not see this baby again. I’ve held her, bounced her on my hip so E could eat her lunch. I will miss this baby, the innocence and trust in those dark eyes looking up at me.
I have no idea how the extreme cutbacks in the social safety net might affect them. Cuts in food banks, access to nutrition supplements like WIC (Women and Infant Children) will affect them. I will be able to check in on this, and I will but I can’t stop those cuts, and they could be sudden. They’re happening now. The baby formula felt expensive when I needed to buy it, especially the specialty kind when one kid made my child sick. It has probably at least doubled, maybe more. And I had a job, a college education, a house, a husband, support, heat. I have never gone without heat. So far, at least, I have not gone without medicine.
I drive away after this drop-off, my husband at the wheel, hoping that their bus has plenty of heat, and at least one kind and trustworthy soul to help if she needs it. E has made this ride before, many times. Most of her family lives on a reservation in South Dakota. E. is resilient, She is wise, and street-smart in a way that I am not and likely never will be. We are close to the same age, five years apart. Worlds apart. Yet, when we both look down at that clear-eyed baby and I say goodbye, we are as close as two mothers who want the same thing: that this baby be loved, be cared for, be healthy. Be safe.
“Be safe.” It is out of my hands. I can say a prayer, and I will, but for today, I’ve at least done one small thing. I don’t want to bounce back from that.