His Home is with Me
Nate
Categories:
research, Street Pack, street retreat, testing
Aug 6, 2009 07:04 pm
3 Comments
Boston Street Retreat: Episode 3
The second day staying out on the street in Boston was a completely different experience from day one. Instead of staying downtown we wandered towards Cambridge because we read there was a lunch and dinner site there. Cambridge was much more laid back than the inner city. I slept on a bench for a few hours in the middle of the day and the people were so friendly: both homeless and housed.
A bird checking out my "pillow" on the park bench
After dinner we were sitting in a park and a middle aged guy just came right up and started to tell us about his life. He was still working but had just lost his house a few months back.
We asked him about sleeping in this park and he began to give us all kinds of tips on places to sleep and where to get free late night pizza. It turns out this park we were in is known as "the slab" (because of the large stone benches) and is home to a community of local homeless. He introduced us to one guy in his 60’s who had been living right in the same spot for 20 years.
A statue at "the slab"
As it got dark we went down to Harvard Square and were instantly welcomed by more members of the community. Mary, a woman in her 40’s or so, took us under her wing and showed us different places people were permanently set up with tarps and bedding; some spots right on the sidewalk. She said he had not moved his things for years.
She asked if I was homeless and of course I told her the truth. She commended us for it and was even more excited to introduce us to more of her friends. There was live music and tourists everywhere. We spent the rest of the night listening to music, laughing, talking about our families and cracking jokes. What a contrast from the night before.
It was incredibly powerful to feel so welcome in a community of strangers who were nothing but positive, friendly, and generous. Mary and Steve (who made a decent buck selling the local street newspaper Spare Change ) even told us who to look out for; a group of “punk” adolescents , probably runaways, who were addicted to heavy drugs and would steal anything they could get their hands on. They looked down on drinking and drugging and explained how people living out here get by through helping each other out and pooling resources.
Before the night ended some of us headed over to the pizza place that gives away free pies. I ran into everyone I had met earlier in the night holding open pizza boxes, eating and laughing.
This is where I slept the second night in the park surrounded by many of the friendly folks I met the night before.
As I walked up the hill to the park, a piece of pizza in one hand, a piece of cardboard in the other, I was reminded of a moving experience I had walked by a few hours earlier. A 9 year old kid waiting to cross the street was talking to an elderly homeless woman in a wheelchair who amongst many other things had a cat.
I overheard him say, “Is your cat homeless too?
She replied, “No…his home is with me”
Her reply couldn’t have better expressed what I had experienced that night.
Mary, Steve, and all the rest of their friends who make up this positive and compassionate community are not “homeless” because they have each other. It made me think the most excruciating reality for some homeless is not the difficulty in finding food, warmth or shelter but is the feeling of being completely alone, disconnected, and unsupported.
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