Vindauga

There but for the grace and all that

Today and Lin and I and some of her friends and their moms visited a women's shelter. Lin and the girls are looking for a service project. As you can imagine the shelter was rich with opportunities for service. The girls had lots of options; entertain preschoolers while their moms studied, serve meals, sort clothing donations.

The director took us on an extensive tour and we met lots of residents and workers and heard their stories. I think the director was thinking she was scaring our girls straight. Truth is, these girls are pretty straight to begin with. Come on, they are 11 and 12 looking at how to fit in a couple of hours of service every week around their homework schedule. They aren't at-risk youth. I kind of felt like forcing these women to recount their troubled past to little girls and middle-aged moms seemed invasive with no real purpose.

I know giving their "testimony" is likely part of their program to deal with their addictions. Also a big factor in their programs is giving God all the credit for their recovery.Woman after woman would say "I've been sober for XX months, I'm getting my GED, I have one of my kids back, I'm out of jail because God saved me." I wanted to say, "Well maybe, but it's also because you are working your ass off to accomplish these things. Be proud." But I didn't. I nodded my head and smiled and moved on to the next story.

I always find it interesting that none of them say "I was abused and beaten down and poor and uneducated and looked for solace in drugs/alcohol because God was punishing me." God gets all the credit, but none of the blame.  I've heard this before, we've all heard it before in all sorts of situations. Yesterday just brought it out in stereo hearing woman after woman repeat it. The deist in me (I believe in god, but mostly think god has little power over what happens in the world. It's the only way I can deal with the injustice and tragedy. I think world is wholly human run. [Except for Saint Zita and I'll talk about that another time, when I'm not questioning  other's religious beliefs and therefore leaving myself open of calls hypocrisy and other ridicule.])

I know, first hand that part of dealing with addiction is admitting you are powerless over drugs/alcohol so you must give the power to someone or something else. God does seem like the logical choice.

Their stories were all compelling, even though I don't know that I had a right to hear them. Nearly all of them started out with meth. Though I'm sure there was something or lots of somethings that took them down the path that made meth seem appealing. One woman talked about being a convicted felon at 19, trying meth at 13, losing her child to the state at 15. She's working on her GED, but it's going to be very difficult for her to get a job because of the felony conviction. Sigh.

Moving on...the shelter and dorm rooms were so ridiculously clean that I was almost inspired to come home and clean our rat trap of a house. We look like more of a flop house than the shelter does.( Literally, we come home from school, work and flop down on a couch to read, write, do homework, watch TV.) The rooms were decorated and personalized and looked like dorm rooms belonging to anal retentive college girls rather than recovering addicts (some of them felons) and their children. The common areas were clean, comfortable and family like. It seemed like a good place to try to get your feet under you and your head on straight. 

It really does seem like the luck of the draw that you are born into a situation that creates that kind of chaos in your future. It's bad choices, but it's also bad environment and/or genetics that predispose you to situations like that. Nobody chooses to be an addict.

Downstairs was the homeless shelter for women and children. The temporary residents are let in at 5:00 and must leave at 7:00 a.m. There are more than twice as many women and children as there are beds. The youngest is a newborn, the oldest is 87. (Can you imagine being 87 and homeless? Heartbreaking.) The overflow sleep on mats in the lunch room. They just got an emergency grant to take over a nearby building and add more beds and some showers. 

We toured at 4:00, there was a huge line waiting to get in for a meal and the night. I can't even imagine what it's like with all those people in those couple of rooms. They get a warm place, dinner and breakfast the next day, but they also must attend chapel.

This is one of the things I like about Catholic Worker in contrast. If you want to hear about religious beliefs, you can ask, but you don't have to.

All in all, it was eye-opening. It demystified the whole place for me. It's comfortable and pleasant, not scary. Lin is going to volunteer, and so am I. I've told Mallory and Aubree to consider it. The residents seemed pleasant and would be nice to work with/for. (Yes, it's a preposition at the end of a sentence. I like it that way.)

I'm immensely proud that I have children that seek out opportunities to serve others. Lin is also thinking of starting a new book drive for kids at Head Start and Boys and Girls Club. I'll let you know more later in case some of you want to participate.

Take some dramamine

If you get motion sickness, you might want to think twice about seeing Paranormal Activity. Lots of hand-held camera set Mal's stomach astray. Poor kid. However, Bert and I thought it was a pretty fun movie. No gore, just suspense. My kind of scary movie.

Holy Moly

I almost went to bed without posting.

Let's direct your attention to something worthy of reading. Eden Kennedy has always been one of my favorite bloggers. She is such a great storyteller. And I like her dogs. Read this.

See you tomorrow.

The Weirdness

Okay, this is the weird thing. The night Bert was sitting on the phone, talking to his boss, learning he was going to lose his job, I quietly said a little cheer because he would then get to see Lin play basketball the next week. Yeah, our lives are going to hell in a hand basket, but I'm thinking of the freedom.

He has been super busy the last 10 days. Looking for work, doing some part-time work for my boss, catching up on little stuff in our life, looking at grad school.

However, he has also volunteered in Mason's classroom, driven to soccer practice, and picked kids up from school. Everyday I troll every site that might possibly have a job opening but at the same time I think not only "please let him get the job" but "please let it start January 1st."

I'm loving having a stay-at-home parent again. The kids love it. Bert loves it. Now it's no longer an hour or two of interaction in a day, mostly in a hurry to make or clean up from a meal or get kids off to bed or school. There is time. He's reading more, playing games after dinner.

Time is a huge, huge gift. Unfortunately the price tag is too high to enjoy for very long.

Private Conversations

Today I had the chance to have three of those "big" conversations.

Lin is studying the human body and health this year. She started talking about HIV and AIDS, and was surprisingly well informed for an 11 year-old. I told her all about my best friends who died of AIDS and the impact their death head on my life and how ignorant the world was in 1986. She was stunned. She is still shocked to hear about discrimination and prejudice.

At dinner Mason asked about his birth. I gave a brief explanation of C-sections and thought we were done. Then he asked about when the girls came out of my legs, forgetting the previous conversations about childbirth. When I used the word "vagina" at the dinner table he told me felt queasy. I love 7 year-old boys.

In her further studies of the human body, Lin learned what a liver does. She can't believe that anyone would ever eat any kind of liver. She said "What's next? Pancreas?"  We then had a short conversation that when you really thought about it, all flesh and organs were gross to eat. Damn it, I may have another budding vegetarian.