By Gerri Graves
A friend and I stopped in a coffee shop downtown, after leaving City Hall. We both work towards finding solutions in regards to the ever increasing homeless numbers, which…… at times, can feel a lot like taking a foam bat to a brick wall.
Luckily, the two city employees who run these groups are really easy to work with…… and so, time goes by pretty fast.
We ordered our drinks, and chatted while we waited. When our coffee came up, we were handed one of their monthly stickers. (I love the stickers at halloween) It was of a pickle in a jar…..and I just about spit my coffee out when I saw it.
Let me expand…..
My ex and I had taken Julian and his two daughters on an outing for the day, to an old covered bridge in nowheresville Indiana.
I had a favorite book in childhood that had all these wonderful stories that involved horses. Other kids wanted cats & dogs, I wanted a horse so bad my heart just ached. I doodled horses, wrote poems about horses, had a collection of flocked horses and read everything I could get my hands on…..about horses.
My most favorite story, by far, was Sleepy Hollow. I read and reread it hundreds of times.
So…… I made it a mission to see as many covered bridges as I could.
This particular one, on this day, was attached to a very old cemetery. Many of the old headstones were broken, missing or blank…..the words and dates erased through erosion and time.
The trees were very large and old on the property, providing ample shade over the entire cemetery and gave us a bit of respite from the extremely hot and muggy day.
The kids and I wandered aimlessly through the grounds, reading the headstones that were still legible and righting a few that had fallen over. We even cleaned and weeded the plot of a child that had died over 150 years ago. Her name and relevant dates, still readable due to it being a flat headstone embedded at ground level. It had been snugly protected from Indiana’s unpredictable, and sometimes frightening, heavy storms and tornados.
As we finished, I stood back up inspecting my work and caught some orange within the periphery of my vision……. Wild Bittersweet!! I ran over to where it was located and started harvesting the berry laden vines. I also found wild buckeye nuts and grabbed those too. (I made the most beautiful autumn wreath that year!) I used the length of my skirt as a basket and filled it so full that the weight of it threatened to pull it down entirely.
Not wanting to be seen as a half naked banshee running amuck within the headstones, I turned to make my way back towards the car to deposit my newly harvested bounty.
It’s then that I noticed an elderly man leaning against the tailgate of his old Ford truck…….talking to my son! How my little three year old managed to get clear across the cemetery in the very small window of time that it took me to harvest a few vines and buckeyes, I’ll never know, but there he was! My stranger danger alarm sounded like a punch to the gut. I dropped everything and started off to where he was…..calling him back as I went.
Julian met me halfway……smiling and laughing, while I brought myself back from the brink of hysteria.
I knelt down, grabbing his hands, meeting his eyes and firmly reiterated the warning of engaging with people we don’t know.
His dancing eyes betrayed he was having none of my mommy austere words of caution. He laughed and in his sweetest ‘toddler vernacular’…… complete with a slight speech impediment in which ‘R’s became ‘W’s, he replied, “Mawm…. he’s weally nice! He show’d me his pickle!”
My eyes, I’m sure, widened with shock and horror…….and I walked (more like stomped) my way towards that old man……..intent on giving him a piece of my mind and getting his license plate number.
I will not pretend that I was not enraged…..far past enraged, more like. I was hopping mad.
As I approached, he smiled at me……which seemed to make me even angrier. I lashed out at him and said, “My son said you showed him your pickle! What in the h*ll do you think you’re doing, you creep?”
That sweet smile never left his face. He stood up, moved over a couple of paces and with a flourish of his hand, like a model from the Price is Right showcasing a Brand-New-Car (!), he alluded to the flats of cucumber pickles lining the back of his truck!
Ah, man……I felt about 2 inches tall. I almost verbally beat down an 80 something sweet man, who just wanted to know if we’d be interested in buying some of his homegrown veggies.
All of the self-righteous indignation left me instantly and out came the most sugar laden apology I could muster. He actually laughed and completely understood the misunderstanding. He was nicer to me than I had a right to.
We left that day, loaded down with bittersweet, buckeyes, four huge flats of cucumber pickles and the biggest slice of humble pie I have ever consumed.
After guilt purchasing hundreds of cucumber pickles, I obtained about 50 canning jars……and canned the biggest batch of bread and butter pickles you have ever seen. And if I’m to be honest, they were the best bread and butter pickles I’d ever tasted. We ate every last jar. No joke!
Where am I going with this? You’ll see the correlation shortly. (I love a good story. The lessons they contain, stay with you longer.)
As of late, I’ve heard many creative adjectives describing the unhoused. None of them positive or constructive. In this ever increasing volatile world we live in, some feel emboldened……… comfortable, in saying the astonishing. They’ve garnered a platform and online support that lend courage to those closeted thoughts.
They voice it within their community. They write letters, bills and speak in public meetings. Their words gain traction, bending those on the fence……or sway them entirely to their point of view.
As a fellow human being, I too have opinions on certain topics. Some, not for the betterment of mankind. It’s how we’re built and it’s an easy progression to grow weary of a situation, and air those negative thoughts.
I’m not upright enough to be the moral compass for a community. None of us are. However, I am proud of the fact that I question those thoughts. I dissect them mentally to get at the root of the issue. I reprimand myself and adjust accordingly. Forcing a door that leads to an understanding of the situation and how I can be a voice for change.
If none of us work on change, then the issue remains the same.
The very fact that I have to write this, speaks proof to the fact that we’re not holding our fellow brothers and sisters to our bosom, but instead making life harder for them.
No one is asking you to love the thing that you currently loathe……in fact, I’d argue to the contrary. I’d direct those passions to a solution, instead of condemning a community that has no voice in this city.
Instead of denying your fellow citizens the right to exist, cause lets face it- no matter where they go during the night or day, laws like ones passed or being considered, will cause them harm. We’re exacerbating the hurt and offering very little in the way of a solution.
Nothing anyone has proposed is an answer to an ever growing issue that’s happening all across the United States. Not a Boise problem, a national problem.
Laws like these, criminalize the destitute. It’s open and law abiding discrimination and a line through the middle of our state dividing us even further into oblivion.
Assuming every homeless person, lumped into a derogatory category, are all the same…..is a huge injustice to those that are living on the street. Their life is already interrupted, now having to prove their right to exist at all.
I can’t tell you how many times I was told, “You don’t look like a homeless person.” ……..meaning, they’ve already stereotyped a lot of us. I mean, what does a homeless person look like anyway? Assuming we’re all dirty, dangerous, addicted and unwilling to work, helps no one. It causes embarrassment, self deprecation and depression among those of us that are already experiencing the worst moment of our lives. Internalizing the loathing of ourselves and furthering that spiral straight to the bottom.
A swift kick to the gut would hurt less.
This is not a solution, it’s a furtherance of the problem. We need to remember to loathe the problem……not the people that make up its ranks.
