Last week after Dinner I gave E. a ride home.
She's been through a lot lately. Her health isn't good and her life has been very stress-filled.
One thing she's been glad of, though, is that one of the team fixed her door. Most of the rooms at the Motel fasten with padlocks, often provided by the manager who keeps a key. Problem with a padlock is that when it's on, everybody knows you're not home. If it's not, you're in.
So it's nice to have that bit of basic privacy. The simple ability to pretend you're not there if you so choose, and to not have everybody know all of your business.
There is a drawback, though.
Last month she was in the hospital for a while. She didn't want everybody to know she was away, so once the ambulance had come and taken her, only a couple of people who live there knew how long she was away for. Those of us who don't live there had more info, but we didn't tell, because E. wanted it that way.
However, after a few days, somebody knew she'd gone and hadn't been seen coming back. They figured that probably meant she was still gone. So they took a chance and, late one night, broke in.
Stole a bunch of her stuff, including her bank card.
Problem is, she wasn't still gone. She'd been sent home by cab so she wouldn't be "under surveillance" as she puts it, for Thanksgiving.
She was lying there in the dark, in her bed, holding her breath, not moving, terrified, while this person rifled through her home and took anything with a street value.
Which left her very shaken and badly spooked. She's afraid to be in her room alone now, even though the windows are screwed shut. Afraid to open the door to a knock. Afraid to walk home across the parking lot in the dark.
I guess that's the problem with being tough. It's necessary for survival, but creates its own peculiar weakness.
You become tough by, stick by stick, stone by stone, building around yourself scaffolding and buttresses and they hold you upright and create space that other people can't walk into. But you forget that, in the end, you're just you, small and vulnerable and already wounded, and that the scaffolding and buttresses are there for a reason. Because you're standing alone. Sleeping alone. Walking alone.
And when somebody who doesn't care takes a good hard kick at your buttresses, you're left with quite a draft.
But we all do that. We all put on a front of health and alrightness.
Even businesses.
A few weeks ago, a chain of dairy and grocery stores suddenly closed its doors. They're a regional business, family owned and the traffic going in and out of their 20 or so stores must have been tremendous. They had the best price on milk, cheap bread, were involved in the community. They were the place where you'd take your family for ice cream after soccer practice.
But one day, the managers got a phone call saying that at a certain time in the afternoon, they were to lock their doors and walk away. It was over.
The story in the papers was that they'd declared bankruptcy.
It took me a few days to realize what this meant.
These stores were full of perishables. Bread, milk, cheese. Some of the stock was frozen and would last forever, but what about refrigerated and unrefrigerated stock? Surely it wasn't an asset to be sold to pay debts. And it could only be an asset for a week or so. Then it would become a liability. A fuzzy blue, stinky liability.
So we saw an opportunity and started asking around. Phone calls, emails. Networking it, trying to get an answer to what was happening to the bread and milk.
We never heard back from anyone.
I asked the local Sally Army guy, and he hadn't heard anything either. But he was concerned because they'd just bought a bunch of milk vouchers from this company. Were they worthless now? Probably.
What a mess. It just makes me angry. I could stand at the window of the store, watching the racks of bread go moldy, but nobody would even tell us why we couldn't give it to people who could eat it.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
r
She's been through a lot lately. Her health isn't good and her life has been very stress-filled.
One thing she's been glad of, though, is that one of the team fixed her door. Most of the rooms at the Motel fasten with padlocks, often provided by the manager who keeps a key. Problem with a padlock is that when it's on, everybody knows you're not home. If it's not, you're in.
So it's nice to have that bit of basic privacy. The simple ability to pretend you're not there if you so choose, and to not have everybody know all of your business.
There is a drawback, though.
Last month she was in the hospital for a while. She didn't want everybody to know she was away, so once the ambulance had come and taken her, only a couple of people who live there knew how long she was away for. Those of us who don't live there had more info, but we didn't tell, because E. wanted it that way.
However, after a few days, somebody knew she'd gone and hadn't been seen coming back. They figured that probably meant she was still gone. So they took a chance and, late one night, broke in.
Stole a bunch of her stuff, including her bank card.
Problem is, she wasn't still gone. She'd been sent home by cab so she wouldn't be "under surveillance" as she puts it, for Thanksgiving.
She was lying there in the dark, in her bed, holding her breath, not moving, terrified, while this person rifled through her home and took anything with a street value.
Which left her very shaken and badly spooked. She's afraid to be in her room alone now, even though the windows are screwed shut. Afraid to open the door to a knock. Afraid to walk home across the parking lot in the dark.
I guess that's the problem with being tough. It's necessary for survival, but creates its own peculiar weakness.
You become tough by, stick by stick, stone by stone, building around yourself scaffolding and buttresses and they hold you upright and create space that other people can't walk into. But you forget that, in the end, you're just you, small and vulnerable and already wounded, and that the scaffolding and buttresses are there for a reason. Because you're standing alone. Sleeping alone. Walking alone.
And when somebody who doesn't care takes a good hard kick at your buttresses, you're left with quite a draft.
But we all do that. We all put on a front of health and alrightness.
Even businesses.
A few weeks ago, a chain of dairy and grocery stores suddenly closed its doors. They're a regional business, family owned and the traffic going in and out of their 20 or so stores must have been tremendous. They had the best price on milk, cheap bread, were involved in the community. They were the place where you'd take your family for ice cream after soccer practice.
But one day, the managers got a phone call saying that at a certain time in the afternoon, they were to lock their doors and walk away. It was over.
The story in the papers was that they'd declared bankruptcy.
It took me a few days to realize what this meant.
These stores were full of perishables. Bread, milk, cheese. Some of the stock was frozen and would last forever, but what about refrigerated and unrefrigerated stock? Surely it wasn't an asset to be sold to pay debts. And it could only be an asset for a week or so. Then it would become a liability. A fuzzy blue, stinky liability.
So we saw an opportunity and started asking around. Phone calls, emails. Networking it, trying to get an answer to what was happening to the bread and milk.
We never heard back from anyone.
I asked the local Sally Army guy, and he hadn't heard anything either. But he was concerned because they'd just bought a bunch of milk vouchers from this company. Were they worthless now? Probably.
What a mess. It just makes me angry. I could stand at the window of the store, watching the racks of bread go moldy, but nobody would even tell us why we couldn't give it to people who could eat it.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
r
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