Pt 2 of What the Homeless Men Taught Me About Mothering

  (what happened the next day)


I had emailed my best friend, confiding in her what had occurred like it was some dirty secret. But she didn’t write back and I guessed she was as abhorred with my actions as I was. I kept picturing the two men needing to buy food and being a dollar short. What had I done? But, try as I might, I couldn’t forget Michael’s words and the sadness that took his face when I attempted to refuse his right to give.


The next morning I rose with a mission. I baked a loaf of bread. We were living out of backpacks, eating with plastic cutlery, definitely sans measuring cups and it was no easy task, but I managed. Back home, bread-making was something I excelled at and I was going to share that skill here.

The kids made a card for Russell and Michael, putting into misspelled words what they guessed Scarlett wanted to say to them. I pulled some money from our grocery stash, stuck it in the card, grabbed my loaf of bread wrapped in a plastic sack and headed out the door. I had no idea how to find them in a city as big as Boston, but we were starting out early and my best inclination was to hit the track again.

“They’re here!” My son yelled, charging towards a far-off group of men with a shopping cart. I was a bit more reticent, we were still a few hundred yards off, and though these men did indeed have a shopping cart, I wasn’t sure they were our friends or how they would feel about a loaf-wielding six-year old thundering toward them. But as we got closer, sure enough, it was Russell and Michael.

Exuberant Charlie reached them twenty feet ahead of the rest of us. By the time I reached him, Michael was clutching the bread and in tears. He held a hand out to me, obviously not recognizing me from the day before and asked who I was. I sat down next to him, reintroduced myself while shifting Scarlett in hopes that he might remember her. He smelled strongly of alcohol and he looked tired, but his eyes were as friendly as the day before.

Russell took over the reins of the conversation today, saying, “Michael forgets things. Give him a second.” He spoke to the kids and remembered Scarlett and the previous day’s exchange. He read the little note and struggled with the crazy misspellings of kid language. A few words in he got weepy and found a hanky. He shoved a corner of it into his nose and left it there, hanging, every once in awhile wiping at a silent tear with the back of his hand.

“They’re crying over your bread, Mom.” My son said at my leg.

Both men laughed hard. The humor seemed to snap Michael back into sobriety. “You remember these times.” He commanded me. “I have two kids. All grown. Good boys. You just keep being a good Ma to them.”

Before even realizing the words were out, I asked the question, “How do I do that?”

It was something I hadn’t even asked my own mother-- my closest friends. Only my husband knew that I was struggling with this heavy burden of terror that I was a horrible mother. I don’t know if it was the sudden flash of lucidity that made Michael appear to me like a spiritual guru that had all the answers, or his yesterday’s breaking of a social absolute, or if it was just that I’d been waiting for so long to have an emotional connection with someone, anyone, who would give me an honest answer.

His answer was immediate, “Love ‘em. You can’t do it perfectly, but you can do it good.”

Russell repeated the words. “Love ‘em.”

I nodded, a bit stunned by the wisdom and the simplicity of their guidance and how it was just what I needed to hear. A lot of things came together for me right then. Yesterday, I had tried to deny a man his right to be generous, purely because I ignorantly thought I had more to give. Also, because taking money from a homeless man wasn’t what a perfect mother would do. I had almost messed up a beautiful moment because I was too afraid of messing it up. I realized I was doing the same thing with my children.

Russell added, “…and get ‘em ice cream every once in awhile!” They both whooped at that.

That night I quit worrying about money and being perfect and doing what was socially acceptable. That night we all had ice cream for dinner and I loved my kids.
               Not perfectly, but good.

What the homeless men taught me about mothering Pt.1

“S’cuse me! Miss! How old’s the little girl?”

I slowed my jogging stroller and yanked an ear bud out of my ear. I had come up alongside two homeless men and their shopping cart where they had settled in the shade along the college jogging track which I had just found earlier in the week. I had sort of asked for this. I was new in town, still so glad to finally be living in the same state as my husband that I smiled at everything—even homeless men.

I pivoted the stroller so they could see my pretty baby industriously blowing raspberries from the bonds of her five-point safety harness. The two of them were seated on the lowest bench on a riser of bleachers. I noticed a few college students glance up from their laptops at our exchange. I was getting pretty used to the glances, having just moved into a college town with my three kids-- the only kids in the entire town as far as we could tell—we were used to stares. I took these current stares as a good sign, I sure had enough witnesses if one of the men tried something.

“She just turned a year.” I said, yanking out my other ear bud to make sure I wasn’t talking too loud.

“Ah! Did she get a chocolate bunny for Easter?”

I laughed, a little surprised at what a friendly question this was. “No. Poor thing doesn’t have any teeth, yet.”

They introduced themselves, not holding out hands to shake, but smiling. The talkative one was Michael. His companion who sat within arm’s reach of a shopping cart laden with coats and glass bottles was Russell. Now that I was at conversation distance to them, they both looked nice. Happy, not dirty, and coherent. I actually wondered if I had made a hasty generalization about them being homeless just because of their proximity to a shopping cart and their advanced age in a town of 18-22 year olds.

Michael continued, “How about ice cream? Did she get any of that?”

I glanced down at the little bald pate of my daughter. “No…” I didn’t want to get into how her pediatrician had warned against milk products until she was a year old, and that she, poor neglected child number three, had yet to try ice cream though she had already blown out her first candle. I covered with, “She had a jelly bean, though.”

I could feel my target heart rate sinking and felt the pull to get back to my workout before my other two charges tired of playing in the long-jump box that I’d directed them to use as a sandbox so that mommy could get in just one mile of uninterrupted sweating. I gave the two men a closed-mouth smile, the one that I used for farewells and lifted a foot toward the padded track.

“Hey, from the heart… from the heart.” Michael, the quieter one, said, as he reached toward me and put his hand to his breast. His companion nodded and did the same. I didn’t know what he was talking about and that confusion paused me.

He had removed his wallet from the depths of the green shopping cart. In a flash it was open and I was momentarily fixated on the fact that though it was unmistakably a wallet, it was drastically different from my own. Dusty, no credit cards and though I could only glimpse the edges of a few green bills within; none of them were crisp. I started to shimmy sideways as to make my imminent escape as fluid as possible. I had come out to jog. I didn’t have any money on me and wanted to save them the embarrassment of what I assumed was coming. The thought flashed through my brain that as ‘do unto others’ as I was, I’d been the wife of a medical student long enough, was so used to barely scraping by, that I generally didn’t feel able to give away money even if I did have a few bucks on me.

“It was nice meeting you both. Say goodbye, Scarlett,” I looked down at my baby as a way of dropping eyes with them. I had managed two steps.

“From the heart.” Michael repeated, and looked at me with soft eyes. He then extended his hand to my baby girl and placed a ragged dollar bill in her pudgy fist.

I felt my eyes bug and my stomach tighten. What had just happened? I threw a glance over at the shopping cart, just to make sure that it did, in fact, hold the trappings of what I guessed homeless people to have. Ohmigosh! A homeless man had just given my baby a dollar!

I took the bill from her clutch and held it back to them. “No. No, that is so kind of you, but, no. We couldn’t.” Michael backed away from my offered hand, not looking at me anymore. I’m guessing I must have been some kind of sight, white lady freaking out the moment the world wasn’t just what she expected. I advanced on them, dollar leading the way, pleading for them to take it back. Bits of my own life and the value I personally placed on a dollar flashed before my eyes-- the solitary two times in her life that my 8 year old had ever been to an ice-cream parlor; the times when I actually walked with three small children across town vs. take the two-dollar subway ride. But I always had a roof over our head, insurance, tasty food. My brain quickly extrapolated what a dollar must mean to these men. I shoved it at them more aggressively.

Michael looked up at me, more than a bit sad, and just as quickly looked down. He spoke quietly, “I’ve had a lot taken away from me. But you can’t take away my bein’ generous.”

I swallowed hard and blinked as the arm in which I clutched the bill dropped. Russell was nodding at me. “From the heart. We want the little girl to have ice cream.”

I couldn’t get my eyebrows to fall, but I did my best to rearrange my face to look less like a white woman taking money from two homeless men, and more like a person being given a gift. “Thank you,” I said with a flustered smile as I gave the bill back to my toddler. “It’s very generous of you. Thank you.”

Later that night, I couldn’t sleep for the guilt. I had taken money from a homeless man. What kind of monster was I? What was I thinking? There had to have been a way to get out of that situation.

    Read part 2 here:  http://redzoegirl.blogspot.com/2011/06/pt.html

Summary of book

      Think Twilight, but instead of vampires, it's people who control the weather.  A teenage girl fresh off a heart transplant falls for one of these 'balancers' and is pulled into an ancient society that has a hand in keeping Earth within the tiny windows of climatic variables that life can tolerate.  Oh, and the guy is incredibly hot (there's the teenager hook).

   Official Summary:   After spending most of her life in a hospital on the transplant list, Claire’s extensive experience in awaiting death has in no way prepared her for the perils of high school. She just wants to keep her head down and get through her junior year as uneventfully as possible. That is until she meets James Gray. Well actually, she doesn’t meet him as much as she has a heart attack in front of him and he gives her CPR until paramedics arrive. He’s the mysterious local stunner, with gossip and questions swirling around the disappearance of his older brother. When a mutual friend becomes seriously injured in a fall, Claire witnesses James’ secret power to manipulate the elements. This level of power attracts bad guys who would happily kill a few teenagers to get it. But it ends up that it’s not James they’re after. Because of her heart donor’s secret, Claire becomes a target that only James can save. He’s talented, kind, beautiful and as close to a super-hero as can be-- but it’s tough to let yourself fall in love when you’re more comfortable saying goodbye.

I sided my house—I can do single parenthood
There’s a lot of the details of rebuilding a house that get blurred over with time—like your body’s own personal defense mechanism— it knows that it only hurts to remember some of those long, torturous hours. I woke up this morning remembering that I had sided this house. I write about this, because if you’ve seen the many angled barn of architectural decadence that I live in, you’d understand why I adore salt-box styles. Siding this house, any house really-- just this house in particular, was no easy task. Let me tell you about it.

First off, there was the getting of bids for siding contractors. Oh, this sounds easy? When you have personal insight into the fact that your bank account cannot accommodate $10-$20K more for the house to get a nice ‘skin’, you’ll realize that this part made me cry more than all that follows. Contractor after contractor was sent off to the sight of me folding up their estimates, swiping a few tears and mumbling something like, maybe I can just do it myself.
Somehow that mumble became the second stage. Next I had to find siding to match what was already on large parts of the house. This proved a bit easier, because I found a few receipts from the designer who once lived in the house. He apparently did ALL of his shopping at Menards, so with one stop, I found matching planks of wood. Cue some cringing—20 ft planks of wood are not cheap.

Third, I had to get 300 planks of wood home. Did I mention they came as 20 foot long pieces? 12 inches tall, 1 inch thick, TWENTY FEET LONG! Get out your tape measures, folks. This does not fit in the average SUV. I owned a beat up truck, a true 1960’s monster, but if you’ve still got hold of that tape measure you’ll realize that even in the back of a truck, I would still have 12 feet hanging out the back. And any failing physics student, like I was, knows that if you have more hanging out the back than what’s in the back, then it’s going to tip out.





So fourth, I removed the windshield of the truck and loaded 50 planks at a time THROUGH the entire length of the truck and out over the hood. Then I wedged myself and two kids beneath these planks and together we drove home, savagely breaking probably a LOT of laws. We wore our seatbelts.

Fifth, I should include something in here about how much 300 twenty foot hunks of wood weigh. And then mention something about how unwieldy they are, too.

Sixth, getting them up on vertical surfaces. Low down, those first horizontal stripes weren’t too bad. I’d walk the siding over and level it and hold it with my foot and the help of my two kids and then I’d nail gun it into weather tightness. But as I finished that first row, the kids, only 4 and 6 at the time, couldn’t help me lift higher than 12 inches. I feared I was stuck. But then came up with a pretty ingenius plan. I screwed in a holding screw. I would hold up one end of the wood, set the other end on this screw and Waa—Laa. The screw held one side while I held and nailed.

Seventh, ladder climbing. This memory is pretty blurred, which I’m sure indicates that it was heinous. Before you think I’m too insane or that my house is going to fall apart, this part came at a point when Chuck had some weekends off and together we managed. That’s right. I do have a husband. He’s wonderful and is working as a great doctor, so I didn’t get to see him lots two years ago. But you need to know that he is my best friend and favorite person to work with and he puts up with a lot. I was the one who wanted this house as my little pet project and he let me get it. He’s also always ready to work with me. Sometimes, many times, I’m just too eager and I want to see how much I can do on my own. Nothing makes me feel sexier than when he’d come home with a look of astonishment and say something like, “You put in a water heater?”

Yeah, baby. Some women like shoes…

The house is done. It’s sided and painted and protects us from all sorts of MN storms. And I did it. Do you want to know why I was thinking about siding today? It’s because right now I’m a single parent. Three kids, a blind dog, messy guinea pig, house, and trying to start a writing career.

Before the thought of siding accomplishments got me out of bed, this morning, the worries that I was not going to be able to do all of this on my own held me down. Terrified. Can I keep this up? Can I be a single mother?  Can I do any of this on my own?

I only have to do single-parenthood for two more weeks.  Chuck’s just finishing a six month training in Boston and he returns at the end of the month.
        I wrote this because as hard as siding a whole house was,  it has nothing on motherhood.     

So, Cheers to the parents out there.  four or five cheers to the single moms.  Though I can feel proud of siding my house, I had help when it got too hard to do on my own.  As, tough and brave and ballsy as I like to think I am, I need my husband. I was grateful to wake up today and not feel like I could take on the world single-handedly. I was grateful that I am grateful to be married.

Two more weeks and my love comes home.

Charlie: We need to make a snowman for the animals. We could put things on it, like leftover meat, and the little birds would find it and be so happy.

Extreme Makeover-- extremely ugly love seat

AFTER

After a few commercials. Some tears. A few days of me leaving it out in the sun hoping that the radiant heat from a billion degree ball of fire will melt out the this-ladies-hair-is-purple vibe I get every time I'm near this piece of furniture.

It is done.

Not the hot pink I was planning on when I initally started the re-upholstering. but this does fit better with the other furniture. I painted the frame with high gloss ebony, covered the whole thing in beige urban suede. (the kids like it because it feel's like the dog's ears) I like it because it holds scotch guard really well and is thus easy to clean.

So as this episode of Extreme Makeover-- the extremely ugly love seat edition, comes to a close, picture this little understated gem hoofing it's way into my living room, becoming the landing place for some cute heinies and maybe even a bowl of really sugary candy.

Extreme Makeover-- extremely ugly love seat

BEFORE

Ug.

I'm sure it has great lines, and it's an antique, so the fabric being intact should earn it points, but... Ug. ug. I just don't like it. But I can't get rid of it either. So picture this dusty relic grunting it's way down the street and then... "excuse me, Ma'am. You are extremely outdated." A gasp, a dusty doilie covering an aghast mouth. "You need a make-over." Fade out.

Now behind the scenes, you and I, (Yes we are in this together) are considering what to do. Every time we glance at it we get the feeling of being shoved into itchy tights and being drug to tea with the old aunt. The one with the cats, and the bowl of 'candy" (actually menthol) and THAT love seat. Well, Extreme Makeover in progress. Notice the plyers and scissors in the picture. I almost started ripping before the shot was taken.