Bread

Scott had a box of bread in his car, samples from a vendor that were left over from his sales calls. By the time we went out on some errands yesterday afternoon, the bread wasn’t quite fresh enough for him to use anymore, and we couldn’t keep it because our extra freezer already runneth over with bread samples from his vendors. He mentioned dropping it off at the Maryland Food Bank, which I looked up when we got home. Unfortunately, the food bank is on the other side of the city, so I continued on my search for shelters. I picked My Sister’s Place from a long list I found online because I recognized the address – just about ten blocks from where I work. It’s a day shelter for women and children that provides showers, meals, and some programming, as well as case management and referrals for overnight shelters.

Scott wanted to take a nap, but we drove downtown anyway. When we got to the shelter it was locked. A woman with crazy hair and a plastic bag clutched tightly to her chest opened the door for us, smiling. The inside of the building – a typical retail row – was cluttered with bags and papers and files. Old armchairs and waiting room furniture lined the front walls, and a dozen or so women sat, some talking, some resting. We were directed to the kitchen area in the back of the room, where a woman was pouring juice. Scott explained where the bread came from, as the woman (I didn’t get her name.) opened the box. She thanked us, and as we left, the women all thanked us. Amid a chorus of “thank you,” “god bless you” and “praise the lord” I hurried to the door, barely able to squeak out “good night” and “you’re welcome.” I sat in the car and cried. One block later we were among boutiques, salons, and fusion restaurants.

It’s not that homelessness is some new thing to me. I’ve spent most of my life living or working in or near large cities. And although it always saddens me deeply to see a homeless person, and although my heart gets heavy every time I pass the enclave of boxes and old blankets and shopping carts at 83 and Fayette Street, this was different. Maybe it was context. As sad as it is, homeless people -or more succinctly, as George Carlin put it- houseless people are part of the scenery in a city. It is not so much a matter of becoming desensitized as it is a very necessary matter of accepting it in order to be able to function from day to day.

Out of context, in a warm room, with pictures on the wall and furniture, the homeless people became a group of ladies, who could have as easily been in the waiting room of a doctor’s office or the MVA. How am I any different? Absent the fortune over which I had no control – being born into a family that, while not wealthy, had plenty resources, and being born into a body that will seldom face overt discrimination – absent all that, what decisions might I have made about life? What situations might I have created that I could not reasonably undo without great assistance?

The event was transforming, but not in the sense that an emotional encounter imbued in me a flash of desire to go out and singlehandedly end the problem of homelessness. What was transforming was the experience of clearly naming the suffering: looking at a woman and stating to myself, “You don’t have a place to live. When this place closes in two hours, you have nowhere to go.” Then, looking at the woman sitting next to her: You don’t have a place to live. In two hours you will have no where to go. And then the next: You don’t have a place to live. And then the next: You don’t have a place to live – what are you going to do when these doors close tonight? What would I do, outside in the dark, freezing night? And could I still be grateful for a stranger’s leftover bread?

I went home. Then we went grocery shopping. I surfed the web for a while, then went to bed. This morning I had a half a bagel for breakfast – one of the free ones from Scott’s vendors. Then I wrote about the shelter, thought a bit about actions I could take, and I’m not really sure what I’m going to do.