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60: (September 2021)

I went home to Long Island last weekend. I heard a chorus of crickets in the evening, and the sound transported me to memories and evenings of long ago when I heard those sweet chirps on a nightly basis.

I went home to Long Island last weekend and smelled the salty air in the breeze, and saw the sun setting over the ocean as I was driving.

I went home, but it wasn’t to the house I had grown up in since the age of seven, but I went home. I went to visit my mother, my original home in the deepest sense of the word. I went to visit the one person in the world who has known me every day of my life, and then some.

My daughters were in town so they came with me. My mother had just had a serious medical procedure a week earlier, but she wanted to go shopping, one of the things she loves doing most in the world. I thought it was far from sensible to go shopping so soon after the procedure. She had barely been out of bed all week, but she was so insistent that I dutifully drove the four of us to a few local clothing stores.

I fretted the whole time. What was I doing taking my 90-year-old mother shopping, when she should be home resting? Yet she was clearly enjoying herself immensely. We went in and out of three stores, and she bought each of us an outfit.

It wasn’t until the day after we left that I had a realization. My mother’s ‘love language’ is giving gifts. I dislike shopping and am not particularly good at buying things; I don’t speak that love language very well. But here was my mother, getting out of bed a week after surgery to buy us gifts. I was finally able to translate what she was really saying through that shopping outing: she was telling us she loved us. The shopping wasn’t for her, it was for us. And it meant so much more than having some pretty new clothes to wear.

Yes, I went home last weekend. Home isn’t necessarily a structure or a location. For those of us who are fortunate, it’s first and foremost a place of love.

40: (September 2001)

As part of a former job I had working in a shelter for homeless women, I used to walk the streets of New York City to try to convince homeless women sitting huddled on doorsteps to come in from the cold. These women, usually surrounded by putrid, lice-infested shopping bags, would look at me behind eyes shrouded with fear. Since moving to the country ten years ago, I have volunteered at the local shelter. Now the homeless people I encounter are men, women, and children who are my neighbors—and yours.

Most of the homeless adults have jobs. They have problems, the same as me and you. Only theirs are worse—maybe a bit more bad luck or less education, or more pain, tragedy, or dysfunction to combat in their lives. Many of them have low-paying service jobs, jobs we all rely on to keep our daily lives functioning. They are the cashier at the grocery store, the school bus driver, or the fast food worker. It takes only a little bit of bad luck for people in this wage bracket to lose their housing, because wage increases in the service sector have not kept pace with the rapid rise in housing costs.

In cities, it is harder to ignore homeless people. They sit with their belongings spread across the sidewalk. Some beg. In rural parts of the country, it is easier to think homeless people do not exist, because they live in cars or sometimes in campsites. They live doubled up in apartments until landlords threaten the whole party with eviction if the extra family does not move out. Yes, homeless people are here, as they are in most communities in our country. It is easy to feel helpless when faced with this reality. Helplessness leads to hopelessness, which leads to doing nothing.

But there are things to be done. Homelessness is a very complex issue, intricately bound with wages and housing costs. It will not be unraveled overnight. It has been tightly woven over the past several decades and shows little sign of abatement. But there is always something one can do: donate five dollars, sheets or blankets, or time to your local shelter. There are other ways to contribute, on a broader scale, like contributing with your vote for politicians who recognize homelessness as a national disgrace and have the will to take action. Educating oneself on wage and housing issues is a contribution, for we are often asked to address these concerns in the voting booth or at the town meeting.

Next time you are asked whether affordable housing will be considered in your backyard, think twice. The child whose family is waiting for a place they can afford to live in may be your child’s best friend.

60-40: 

I can’t imagine the stress of not having a roof over my head, or worse, not being able to provide one for my children. I worked with homeless people in my twenties, and here we are, four decades later, with thousands and thousands of people still living in shelters or on the street in a country where homelessness has become part of the fabric of our society.

It’s easy to feel defeated. But I can still try to be part of a solution to societal problems in small ways. And I can hope to be a ‘home’ for the people I love in my life. That’s got to be enough for now. It’s all I’ve got.