Brothers

When he said they were brothers, the nurse arched an eyebrow in disbelief. Let me back up and set the stage.

Win and Al are two close friends who have been around the Homeless Center for a long time. The two men provide active support to each other.

Al was taking a big step toward sobriety when he was hospitalized by a sudden illness. Win immediately went to see him in the ICU. When he picked up the phone to ask for admission, he told the nurse he was Al’s brother. He was told he could visit for a few minutes. He went through the doors which glided open and headed toward the nurse’s station.

"You’re Al’s brother?" asked the nurse with an arched eyebrow.

(Note that Al is African-American, and Win is Caucasian.)

"Uh…step-brothers," replied Win.

The nurse paused for a beat, half-smiled and said, "All right. Ten minutes."

Since Al is very dark-skinned, and Win is very pale, the nurse’s doubt was understandable, but what trumped that doubt was Win’s insistence that he and his friend are indeed brothers.

What is a brother, at least in the world of the homeless? It certainly has less to do with blood than with a bond born of respect, affection and rough times shared. Many of the homeless I see every day have burned many family bridges behind them. Whether they neglected responsibilities, blew through family resources, walked out or were rejected, the homeless are usually out of touch with their past families of blood or marriage. For them family becomes the network of relationships, the bridges of connection, they form right now, today.

The old saying holds that the past is prologue, presumably a prologue to the present. Maybe for the homeless, it is more accurate to say that the present is the prologue to the future, a future they must create fresh every day by the relationships they choose to cherish and choose to affirm to the world, even dubious nurses. Three cheers, then, to Al and Win for taking that important step toward brotherhood which transcended their past and their race.

Keeping Track

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live your life without a calendar, watch, planner, computer or Smartphone? How would you keep track of your schedule? In addition to those external reminders, many of us keep an internal calendar in our head. That’s how we stay organized.

As people become more and more dependent on external devices, hard copy or digital, fewer bother to commit scheduled events to memory. They rely on devices as a kind of auxiliary memory unit.

One of the casualties of being homeless is losing both external and internal calendars! Very few have calendars. Days blur and blend together. Appointments lose their moorings in the mind. Homeless people, even without the occasional complications of mental illness or addiction issues, often exhibit cognitive disorientation and internal disorganization. They float through days without reinforced awareness of the time of day. They lose track easily.

That’s one reason why the homeless often miss appointments with social service people. It’s not that they’re irresponsible (although some definitely are!) - but they lack the external reminders and internal frames of reference which many of us rely on to keep our life organized.

"Keeping track" is a challenge for many of us, including the homeless.

The Doorway to Hope?

Can a fresh haircut improve the life of a homeless person? Absolutely! Certainly looking in the mirror and seeing a well-trimmed image improves self-respect. You can see the buoyancy in their step.

But it also matters that people around you respond with smiles and words like "Hey, look at you! You look great!" But there is also the experience of someone fussing over you, tending you, working to make you look and feel better and affirming your basic worth as a person. That kind of attention does a person a world of good.

On December 16, two professionals came to the Center to offer free haircuts to our guests. Sixteen were served. Their presence was organized by Jean Jacques from Healthcare for the Homeless, through a grant by the Marianites of Holy Cross.

One guest said, "I’ve got an interview tomorrow, and I want to look my best."

Another said, "I don’t want people to think I’m a slob. I’m not."

A woman said, "Makes me feel like a million bucks."

The homeless can be invisible on the streets. Or, if they are seen, they are seen as unkempt and scruffy ruffians. A haircut might make the world see that homeless person differently. I know it makes the homeless see themselves differently. Who knows? Maybe a simple haircut is the doorway to hope.

Humbling

"This place humbles you."

That’s what I heard from Jerry, who has been at the Homeless Center for three weeks, and today I heard the same thing from Vickie who has been here for one week.

Jerry and I were talking about the new job he just landed, picking up a career line that he dropped a decade ago. He spoke revealingly about the poor choices he made which landed him on the street.

Vickie and I were talking about her stint in jail and her plans for drug rehab. She spoke wistfully of the life she has lived, "using and exploiting men." She said, "I used to be high on drugs and high in the world, but now, being on the street and being here, it’s humbling."

"But I needed humbling." That’s the second thing which both Jerry and Vickie said.

"It’s eye-opening to realize that getting a fresh bar of soap is the highlight of your day. Wow, the things I used to take for granted back in the day."

I doubt everyone would agree that being humbled is a good thing. For some folks it can feel like humiliation, a deliberate slam on our self-respect. I’ll never defend humiliation, especially public humiliation, as a positive human behavior; but being humbled is occasionally just what we need.

As Vickie and Jerry said, "Being humbled reminds me I’m no better than anyone else here."

Many of us look for ways of letting the world know that we are better than others, but humility reminds us that we are not. We all need things, want things, crave things and hope for things. What we need, want, crave and hope for will vary from person to person, but the needing, wanting, craving and hoping are fundamental features of human beings.

Some days, I protect myself by thinking that I am not like the homeless. I think about my superior education, my skills and my achievements. But over and over again people like Vickie and Jerry remind me that I am simply a human being – just like everyone else. And that, I realize, is a good thing to remember.

Another Kind of Home...

The headlines have been filled with sad stories of hardworking homeowners who watch housing values plummet, fall underwater in their mortgage, then see their jobs disappear, until finally their home is foreclosed. This blow to the American Dream has happened for some years now, up and down the income spectrum – but it can also happen to the homeless.

Ralph did not own a home or have enough cash to rent an apartment, so he became a regular at the Homeless Services Center. He had found an old car to get around and hold his stuff. He often slept in that car.

Unfortunately Ralph kept parking his car at the Center, where all spaces are reserved. He was told that he had to park on the street, fifty feet away. He resisted for a long time, until finally he confided in me that if he parked on the street, the car would be stolen, because it couldn’t be locked, and he’d lose all his stuff.

This was one of those times when I hated to enforce the rules, when I felt a temptation to be a softie. But rules exist for a reason, and I knew the slippery slope of letting even one car onto the lot. Also, I didn’t actually believe that his car would be stolen, since it was hardly worth stealing, and I doubted that his stuff would fetch much on the market.

I was wrong.

After a few days of dancing around the rules, Ralph finally agreed to move his car, and he did. The next day when he came in for coffee, I asked how he was doing.

"They stole my car. Everything is gone."

Man, I felt like a heel. I realized that if the stuff was valuable to him, then it was undoubtedly valuable to someone else, not for sale, but for use.

When Ralph told me about the theft, with downcast eyes and a catch in his voice, I realized that this man had lost his home. No, it may not have been a $450,000 home in the North End, or a $1500 a month apartment, or even a walk-up efficiency with shared bath, but it was his home. His own home.

The dollar value is not always the point. Trim lawns and lush bushes are not the point either. It’s about having some small patch under control in a huge world that often feels out of control.

A man’s home is his castle, says the old proverb, and the implication is that a man’s home becomes his very own castle, even if its turret is a radio antenna and its walls are front and rear bumpers. Inside his car or castle, a man feels in charge of his world, "the master of his fate, the captain of his soul," as Henley wrote.

As much as any foreclosed six-figure earner, Ralph is a casualty of a harsh world.

The Chair

At 8 AM, when our doors open, they are eager for chairs. Sometimes they want a bathroom quickly, but more often they want a place to lock up their backpacks and plop into a chair.

The chair is a curiously revealing item. I occasionally hear people look at some guys sprawled in chairs and tell me the homeless are "lazy losers." Looking at some of my people collapse into chairs and fall asleep, maybe we’re illustrating that tough judgment.

But we’re not. There is far more to the picture.

As I said to one of those critics, "Last night did you get to sleep in a warm bed in a heated room for seven or eight peaceful hours? Or did you sacrifice an hour of sleep to catch Jay Leno’s monologue? Well, some of these folks slept on a tarp on the riverbank, huddled under a blanket. Some were afraid of being robbed or attacked in the night. Some were rained on, and everyone is just plain cold. Are they rested and ready for an energetic day of job-hunting? Hardly. They’re exhausted. Maybe if they can rest for a couple hours, here in a safe and warm place, then maybe later today they can think about what they need to do next to get their life back on track."

Fatigue is a major factor here. My people are often exhausted. As one guy said to me today, "Trying to get anything done takes forever. Walking and waiting. Walking and waiting." If the homeless are not physically exhausted, they’re mentally spent.

Fatigue can be emotional, spiritual, relational or physical. Fatigue often comes from overextending ourselves, but it can also come from despair or from traumas in our past. As I see things, fatigue is rarely a sign of "laziness." To me a sleeping person tells me two things:

1. This person has been through a lot

2. I’m glad they feel safe enough here to relax, rest and sleep.