Yesterday, I might have still grumbled about my crappy old car, and I might have wished for some extra spending cash to go buy myself some new clothes because I’m tired of wearing the same sweaters and jeans. I may have had a thought in my head at the grocery store that it would be nice to try some of those pricey Boar’s Head cold cuts as I settled for the ones that were on sale.
This morning, though, everything felt like a luxury. The warm bed, the heated house, the food in the fridge and pantry, the hot shower weren’t just basic necessities, but something to be truly grateful for. And then there were the actual luxuries: my phone, where I could check my e-mail and the news before actually getting out of bed. The lotion I rubbed into my skin after my shower. My cats—and the fact that we have enough money not just to feed ourselves, but our furry companions. Yesterday, those things may have felt like necessities, but today I realize they are not.
Last night I went to a yoga class—again, a luxury, but one that does my body and my mind a lot of good. I came out of the class feeling good but hungry, ready to go home and get myself a late dinner, probably a healthy salad. I had parked a little farther away from the studio than I normally do, and as I reached my car, I heard a cough. I turned to see a woman in the vestibule of a vacant building, huddled up in a blanket, settling down for the night.
I could not pretend I hadn’t seen her, but I got in my car, and as I drove away, I was rationalizing to myself why I saw a person in need and did nothing. I knew that those rationalizations were meaningless—I couldn’t fix her problems, but I could treat her like a human being and get her something to eat.
I drove a few blocks and then turned around and went back to her. She told me her name and her story, but as she was very particular about not wanting to be “talked about,” I will honor that and not give any specifics about her. But she wasn’t an addict, nor mentally ill as far as I could tell, although certainly, being on the streets for a while is bound to take a toll on a person’s mental health.
She was just a woman whose life had a few loose threads, and once one of those loose threads was pulled, it began to unravel. Although there was one choice in particular that she points to as the reason for her present circumstances, it was not something that seemed like a bad idea at the time. I might well have made that same choice.
She told me about spending her days looking for work, which is difficult when you don’t have a car. She had to turn down a job doing night cleaning at the mall because the buses here don’t run at night, so getting there would be a problem. Of course, not having access to a shower would certainly hamper a job search—particularly since her job experience had been in retail.
She had two large suitcases containing everything she owned, and I wondered (but didn’t ask) what she did with them while she was searching for a job. The idea of being constantly encumbered by one’s worldly belongings and the necessity of keeping them safe was something that had never occurred to me. I stood there holding nothing but my car keys, with my purse safely locked in my car and the rest of my belongings at home, not something I needed to worry about.
I asked her if she had eaten and offered to buy her a meal. She said she did get some food stamps, but that you can only buy cold food with them, so she was happy for the chance for some hot food. If you have no means of heating up (or keeping cold in warmer weather) the food you buy, that does limit things a bit.
She asked me where I was going to get the food, and when I suggested the Noodle House, she said, “Oh, I would dearly love some shrimp fried rice.” Well then, I thought, you shall have some shrimp fried rice.
I went the couple of blocks to the Noodle House and ordered her food, which cost me about as much as a yoga class, and when I brought it back to her, we chatted a bit longer. I was hungry and getting colder in my leggings and fleece top, and that was when I started thinking about how much I have and how much I take for granted.
But this morning, as I noticed with new appreciation everything I have available to me, I realized that being grateful for what I have is not enough. It would further dehumanize this woman who is so invisible to society if I reduced her to a reminder to be grateful. Of course I should be grateful for what I have, and it should not require meeting a woman who has nothing at all to make me grateful.
The concept of a social ladder assumes that there are people on the bottom rung—or not even on the ladder at all. And sometimes, with the income gap widening at an alarming rate, it feels like the ladder has been pulled a few feet off the ground and rungs have been knocked out of it. As I stood there talking and listening to this woman, I wondered how in the world she was going to grab that bottom rung again and begin to pull herself up.
But more than that, I wondered what I could do to help. What we can do to help. Because we have to. It cannot be OK that there are people sleeping with their suitcases in vestibules. We cannot pretend not to see these people, or that they have somehow done something to deserve it, or that, if they just made better choices, they could pull themselves out of it.
It’s not enough to look at them and think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” We need to find a way for them to experience that same grace.
