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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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We were handing out kits and a young man came running up to the
car. We were handing out kid kits from one trunk and adult kits from another. He was in line with the adults, but when he
heard me directing kids over to the kid line, he went running. I tried to stop him because he was clearly too old for the
things we put in our kid kits. His mother then told me that, although he is 17-years-old, he has autism, and she thought he
would enjoy the kid kit. He came running back in a few minutes and he was very excited about the snacks, the crayons, the
coloring book, the book, the stickers, and the matchbox car. But he asked me if we had anything pokeman. His mother said he
is obsessed with pokeman. We didn't have anything with pokeman on it. That week, I had lunch with a friend who has donated
lots of kit items to A Simple Thread. I told her the story. She brought me two pokeman books and a cap. I took them to the
same place that I had seen the mother and kid before. They were still there. And he was so thrilled that he cried.
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