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I saw a women
sitting out in the middle of a parking lot and she had five little kids with her. I was handing out jackets and snack kits.
I went to offer her a jacket. I asked if she was going to a shelter for the night because it was supposed to get down to 40
degrees that night. She said that two of the kids were hers and three were her sister's. Her sister left the kids with her,
but she hadn't been back for them in three days. These were all little kids -- like maybe ages 2 - 6. She said she couldn't
go to the shelter because they had stayed there before and the staff would know the three kids weren't hers and they would
have to call CPS. So they had been on the streets for 3 nights by then. I gave her a jacket and she said, "Do you have any
kid size ones?" Of course, I didn't. I went back to the car and got a full length cape i had worn for years. When my kids
were little, 2 or 3 of them could fit under it with me when I was wearing it. I gave her the cape and a blanket so at least
the kids could be covered for the night. They all got snack kits, too, and were very grateful for everything.
Four weeks after Hurricane Ike hit, I am still astonished at how it increased the homeless population in Houston. This isn't
because of people who were left homeless in Houston. It's because, when communities like Galveston were destroyed, people
who were already homeless there lost their supports -- the shelters, the soup kitchens, the social services. Then there were
the newly homeless from those communities. I met a single mother with two young daughters. She had an apartment in Galveston
and a job. Ike destroyed her apartment building, as well as the restaurant where she worked. She was waiting on a housing
voucher from FEMA, but she hadn't brought a copy of her lease with her. She hoped to find a job, but she had no place to leave
her children while she worked. She was very happy to get A Simple Thread kits for her and her daughters.
When I first told people that I was going to give kits to the homeless, the most common reaction was, "Aren't you afraid?"
I never was. And now, when I take other people with me, they usually expected to be scared and are surprised at how calm and
how grateful the people are. I've been called an angel so many times! People are thrilled by the simplest things that most
of us take for granted -- toothpaste, deodorant, magazines, new socks, shaving cream, a bottle of vitamins.
A
woman gave me a great compliment one night. She said, "You must do surveys of homeless people to see what we need. You gave
me cough drops in one of your kits. It is so hard to sleep when you have a bad cough. And it's hard for the people around
you to sleep, which gets people upset. I got two whole weeks of good sleep from those cough drops you gave me."
A young man approached me when I was handing out kits and he said, "Are you really giving these away for free?" I asked him
if he was homeless and he said he was. Then he said, "I feel a little funny saying I'm homeless because I have always been
homeless. I grew up in foster homes and, when I turned 18, I had to start making it on my own. It's been hard." It made me
realize how often it is true that the thing that stands between us and homelessness is our family.
An elderly man took A Simple Thread kit and told me that it was his birthday. He shook my hand and he said, "I want to tell
you my name. I just want someone to know my name on my birthday."
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