Funny client story of the week: My favorite client came into the office (surprisingly sober) earlier in the week saying he had lost his keys but thought they may be somewhere in his apartment. When he came back yesterday we asked him if he'd found his keys yet. He said, "Oh yeah I found them in this bag of chicken I had. They must have slipped in there somehow." To which I responded, "I hate it when that happens."
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A couple days ago I was walking to visit a client at his apartment. Selfishly I like going to his place because I get to walk right past Yankee Stadium. "46 Days until Home Opener" the sign reads. And at that moment everything is so very surreal. I have to stop and remind myself that just one year ago I visited New York for the first time and just 6 months ago I was making sandwiches at Blue Baker in College Station, TX and now here I am walking down 161st street in Bronx, NY still wondering how exactly this all came to be.
Probably the most pressing struggle of living here (and believe me there are tons) is defining what exactly "home" is. New York is not my home. In Texas is the house on Burford Place where I spent 18 years of my life and the little league right across the street where I played softball for 7 glorious years and still have my name on a sign for the summer us 10 year olds won district. Texas has my mom, dad, brother, my best friend Kim, my church, elementary school, junior high, high school, college and every friend made along the way...you get the picture.
Yesterday I spotted a South Carolina license plate in the Bronx and asked the woman if she was from there as she was getting out of her car. I told her one of my best friends is from Columbia, and her face lit up because that's her hometown too. Though she's lived in the Bronx 17 years, she was adamant about South Carolina being her real home ("I go back every year"). People at work call her "country" for her accent. I assured her the two of us would spread some Southern lovin' to these parts. Granted she is black and I am white, but I think the two of us parted feeling as though we had just reconnected with old kinfolk.
Most of my clients at work have a very different picture of home, and my job allows me a rare access into their world as I am required to do "home visits" on a regular basis. I have come to identify all the finer details of a typical city-owned housing project: grafitti on the walls with every dirty slang word, gang name or sexual picture imaginable, elevators that smell like urine, doors with missing numbers, blaring rap music coming from nowhere and everywhere in particular, and (on the lighter side) the sweet smells of fried food at most anytime of day. Morning visits are my favorite because I inhale the aroma of bacon, eggs and whatever else happens to be on the menu. Immediately I'm transported back to my grandma's kitchen sitting at the big table w/ the long bench seats catching up with my mom, dad and grandpa....and then I get a little teary because I realize just how far away I really am.
I stand waiting for the elevator doors to open, staring at the graffitti, wondering how people always think to have a black Sharpie with them at just the right time, but mostly how they could have such little respect for themselves, each other, their homes. You would think after volunteering 4 years with inner city youth and working alongside low-income individuals and now being fairly immersed in their lives that I would understand such things. But I don't. And so right then I prayed for understanding--not of the world, but one that goes deeper-- a Godly wisdom that can be acquired through no other means.
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