Across the Great Divide

Elderly Parents, Tenuous Housing, Borderline Lives.

Today was Christian's first visit to the Day Center, and he was the first to sign up for a haircut. Coincidentally, that made him the first to use my new barber's drape. We shot a post-haircut portrait to commemorate the occasion.

This is my first year of volunteering where I give haircuts exclusively. Having a dedicated space with a sink and rotating chair prompted me to up my game from draping customers in bath towels or reshaped trash bags.

Thursday's stylist came in today as well, so we split the list. Good thing. It was a talkative bunch with lots of stories.

Several folks told me about their family relationships and elderly parents whose failing circumstances have played a role in their own unstable living situation.

I'll keep their real names out of it.

One man, call him Mason, owns a house in Georgia, where his otherwise healthy 84-year-old mother lives in her tenth year of severe dementia, needing full-time care. Mason won't take possession for himself until she passes away. The larger family dynamics are just too controlling for him to stay there.

Meanwhile, he had been living in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, when a massive wildfire hit the town. At least 14 people died and hundreds lost their homes in the December 2016 blaze. Mason lost his housing and a good friend perished. In the aftermath, a severe housing shortage drove residents elsewhere. 

Here in Grand Junction, at age 52, he is overqualified for most job openings in his field. A local business owner advised him not to include all his past work history on his resume. Mason tried it and was offered a job, but an E-Verify system check revealed those jobs, and the company withdrew the offer because he had lied on the application. 

He did find construction work, but at the end of the most recent project, the contractor dropped off Mason and the rest of the crew, telling them he'd mail their checks.

He didn't.

For now, Mason's living at the shelter. Another construction job starts in a few weeks. Things are looking up since Mason turned his life over to God, he says. God tore down his old prideful self, and now, as promised, He is building Mason back up.

Another man, Dixon, we'll say, has come to Grand Junction from Arizona several times to help aging parents. Now, only one survives, and when Dixon visits, he's on his own for housing. When he first arrived this time, he tried camping, and ended up being assaulted with a two-by-four while sleeping. While unconscious, he was robbed of almost everything, including his money, ID, and extra clothing.

It's not easy if you're from out of state to get a new ID in Colorado, and without ID, you can't get a job.

I told him I could relate.

---

"You can get a copy of your birth certificate in town, you know.”

“Sure, if I’ve got some identification. But I don’t.”

“It can’t be that hard.”

“It’s not, as long as I’ve got an unexpired fishing license and a gun permit. Or a current pay stub with motor vehicle registration, or a Social Security card and Medicaid card. Oh, there’s other ways if I bring a utility bill and voter registration card plus a booking photo and baptismal record. Or my tax return and a mortgage document plus a certified copy of my ass from my last employer’s copy machine.”

“Come on.”

“Look it up. Colorado has a million ways to validate your identity—and I have like zero point five.”

–From Inhabited

---

He's staying now in the overflow winter shelter, which he says is for the better-behaved homeless people. There, he can have the same bed each night, unlike in regular shelter where he had to strip his sheets each morning and find a new bed the next night.

It nice there. Friendly. With good wifi. He sees it as a stepping stone, now that he's recovered from a major shoulder rebuild. He's lined up a job with a flagging company once road construction season starts.

The overflow shelter closes in May.

Small Abundances.

I spend my Wednesdays with people whose entire store of material possessions would fit in your garage.

Yes, even in YOUR garage, packed so full you park your cars in the driveway.

Except maybe John's possessions. He has a house in Idaho, but it's polluted with black mold. A sister bought it for him after he cared for their mother for 30 years.

He has tools and maybe a motorcycle upon which his mother took rides when the weather was too hot to cruise in the California 1991 Mercedes he kept mint and still may sell to the discriminating buyer. There's more. But he spoke quietly and it was loud in the hallway.

The black mold made John ill, and he is just getting back on his feet. His feet are going on 80. His mother is approaching 98.

I asked if he wanted to shed his coveralls before the trim, but he admitted he only had underwear on underneath. He'd worn his other pair of Dickies yesterday to a meeting with the case manager, and this was all he had clean right now.

John was my first customer. I finished the day with Nick, who is working on a Celtic look, with shaved sides and dreads down the back. Since he was last, and had his own razor in his pocket, I humored him and razored his head.

The woman in hygiene dispensed far too much shaving cream for the job. The cup in the photo shows how much I had left after finishing.

It seems wasteful to proffer way too much shaving cream in our little world of scarcity, perhaps depriving someone else down the line. But we do it, in part, because advertising has conditioned us to believe that men need mountains white with foam to vanquish a few whiskers.

Better, I think, to offer small abundances to those who have so little. Linger over the shape of their beards. Scribe the lines perfectly, though they will soon be overgrown. Yes, others wait, but they, too, will be lavished with care when their turn comes.

I wash the excess lather down the sink, but Nick leaves happy, and I do, too.

So much for a pennies' worth of wasted soap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N3w9liDlVY

 

Ed's Chair.

Returning is bittersweet.

My first day back at the Day Center in Grand Junction, I step into the vestibule, and there is Will. When I was back in Minnesota, I read that he had been arrested for drug distribution.

Based on his rather contemptuous view of authority and his practice of redistributing legal marijuana in a town that did not have legal dispensaries, I feared Will might be back in prison.

But no. Here he is, talking about looking for a job. I'm glad to see him, because he is one of the street people who opens up the world to my limited sight, who I consider a friend.

Yet I'm sad to see him, because the chair he occupies is Ed's, another one of my favorite people.

Ed died while I was away.

Ed was one of the old school homeless. A self-sufficient alcoholic who didn't bother others. Who lived rough and paid the prices—bad health, sore bones, regular arrests for petty infractions. No future.

At the Day Center, Ed was decent and respected. He didn't like the hubbub inside, so he sat by the door and watched, absorbing it all, but rarely speaking unless spoken to. We fetched coffee for Ed, so he could man his post. It was not a group decision, and we didn't do that for other people. Independently, we brought him coffee because Ed had that sort of gravity that only comes from suffering borne without complaint.

We all wanted to help Ed, to get him away from demons so buried we didn't know what they were, but a cup of coffee from the inside was all he would accept.

It was the best we could do.

Some new volunteers have arrived since my last stint, and there is a new computer system at intake that makes the process less personal. Calling up records dampens my pleasure at being able to recall people by name.

On the plus side, I can give haircuts for as many who want them.

Today, I cut for most of my shift. Two women, eight men.

One young man had a cough so bad, I had to ask him to leave. Not for my health, although the health of anyone who came into the room was a consideration, but because his cough was so violent, he couldn't stay in the chair.

I referred him to the clinic across the hall, and then sprayed down everything with disinfectant.

Another customer asked me to make him look respectable for his job search, "So I don't look like some homeless guy who gets drunk all the time."

The short haircut for his balding pate was easy. I spent more time on his beard, trimming it from neglect into a near fashion statement.

"I shake too much to trim my mustache," he confessed. "I want to keep the beard so I don't have to shave every day."

He left ready to interview. There's nothing I can do about the shakes.

On the way out the door, I learned something else about Ed's ending. It wasn't age or alcoholism or COPD that killed him. Someone beat Ed to death.

It will take me a while to put this together. I am always learning this world anew, where help and predation live side-by-side.

Where respect means something, until it doesn't.