The Kindness of Strangers: Green Beans

Last week I took my car to Little Rock for its 12,000 mile oil change.  The dealership sits on the east side of six lanes full of hurtling traffic.  A supermarket sits on the west side.  Although rain was falling intermittently, I was determined to walk to the supermarket to eat lunch while I waited because I like their fried chicken and tender green beans. 

I zipped up my raggedy bum-around jacket, took a deep breath, and then barreled into the traffic.  I dodged three cars to get through the first three lanes to the median, but I made it. 

I scrabbled over the stickery bushes on the median. No mean feat, that.

The second three lanes were easy after the first three and the median, and I reached the parking lot safely.    

The rain started pouring, so I ran the last twenty yards to the supermarket’s doorway.  By the time I got inside, I was a mess: wet, cold, bedraggled.  My bum-around coat was neither waterproof nor warm enough.  My white hair was plastered down on my head.  I suppose I looked like I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from. 

A woman I had not seen before waited on me.  She had the leathery skin of someone who had worked outdoors all her life, or perhaps had smoked for years, or drank too much.  She didn’t have any teeth.  She’s had a hard life, I thought.  She looks like she doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from.  I wish I could help her.

“Lunch special, please,” I said.  “Fried chicken.  Dark.”

She dug through the chicken for a thigh and a leg.  “Sides?” she asked.

“Corn.  And green beans.”  She ladled me up a scoop of buttery corn. 

“What other side did you say you wanted?”

“Green beans,” I said.  “They look real good.”

She raised her head and studied me for a long moment. Then she served me a giant helping of green beans.  She paused, then dipped her spoon in the beans again and added a second big helping.  She looked up, and at the moment our eyes met, I read her thoughts.  She’s had a hard life, she thought.  She looks like she doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from.  I can do this to help her.

So that day, two old women touched each other’s hearts.  She and I saw in each other a needy stranger.  I knew I could do nothing for her, but she knew she could do something for me.  She ladled me a mountain of tender green beans.  And the gift of kindness to a stranger.

 

 

The High Cost of Pet Ownership

Saturday, Baby-Dog Woodrow ate a bar of soap for $140.75.  The bar of soap: 75 cents. The vet bill: $140. 

Our Woodrow is going to recover completely, perhaps because my soap is ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent pure.  (If you are over 60, you know what brand my soap is.)

Because of his Saturday indiscretion, Woodrow vomited three times on Sunday, so I fed him small amounts of rice and rice-water throughout the day. I skipped church to take care of him.  He slept most of the day, wanted me close.  I stayed on the bed with him for hours, whispering “I love you,” reading, and watching John Wayne movies. 

Although he woke me with lively kisses before dawn this morning, we were sitting in the vet office by 9:00.  

Woodrow’s Great Soap Escapade started me thinking (once again) about how much money adequate pet care costs.  And about how many people who have pets can’t afford to have them. 

While I was in the vet’s office, I overheard the receptionist talking to a potential client.  The woman had a voucher to have her dog spayed, and she wanted to know how much money she would have to pay the vet if she used it.  The voucher paid $45 for the spay surgery.  The owner would have to pay $20 for pain medication and $15-18 for something else (I couldn’t hear what).  The owner said that she didn’t want to pay for the pain medication or the required something else. 

The receptionist explained that the vet would not perform a spay surgery without pain medication. 

“Thank God,” I thought, having had a hysterectomy myself. 

Not only did I think about the cost of dog ownership at that moment, but I spent fifteen seconds wondering whether a lady who didn’t want to provide pain medication for her post-hysterectomy dog should even own a dog.

Please understand.  I personally know many people who dearly love their pets but who cannot afford their care.  I once knew a double-amputee military veteran who deeply loved his dog and almost died of a broken heart when she died. She died because he could not afford her monthly heartworm preventative.  Perhaps if I had known it before her death, I could have located a veterans’ organization who would have helped.  I hope she was waiting for him when he finally reached Heaven’s gates, and with his legs restored, he could run with her through sunlit meadows.

The truth is ugly, but people who want to adopt a pet need to understand that the cost of the adoption is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg of years of significant financial commitment.  Anyone who carries a credit card balance can’t afford a pet.  Breaks my heart because disposable income should not be a condition of giving and receiving the love of a dog.  Or a cat.  But caring for a pet is expensive. 

Love ought to be enough.  But it isn’t.

A Prayer for Clean Underpants

I just threw a load of white cotton panties and tee-shirts into the washing machine.  They made me think about what Teacher Extraordinaire Jean Hoard taught me.

One day Jean said to a kindergartner, “Honey, let Mrs. Hoard help you.  You’ve got your tee-shirt on inside-out.”

He said, “That’s the way Mommy wants it.”

Certain the little one was confused, Jean pulled the shirt off over his head, turned it right-side out, and saw mustard smeared all over it. 

“I don’t got no clean clothes,” he told her, “So Mommy turned my tee-shirt inside-out.  Just like my underpants.  I been wearing them all week.”

“Why doesn’t your mommy wash them?” asked Jean.

“We don’t got no washer.”

“What about the laundromat?”

“We don’t got no car, and she’d have to walk and carry the basket, and bad drug people hang out between our house and the laundromat.  She’s scared to go.”

“I see,” said Jean.

“We got to wait until somebody who gots a car can take us.”

When you’re poor, washing clothes is an ordeal.  If you’ve got a washer, does it actually work?  Is your electricity turned on?  Your water?  Your gas to the hot water heater?  Do you have a dryer?  Or a clothes line, and if so, will the weather cooperate?  Got detergent?  Is a laundromat close enough to walk to, one basket at a time?  Will your toddler run into the street while you carry the basket?  Are you able-bodied enough so that you can walk?  Is public transit feasible?  Do you have access to private transportation?  Money to pay for it?  To run the machines?  Is walking down the street safe? Is the laundromat safe?  Are your clothes wrinkle-free, and if not, do you have an iron, ironing board, starch, and the physical ability, time, energy, know-how, and skill to iron them?

I never think about those things when I toss in a load of laundry.  I take clean clothes for granted.  For Pete’s sake, I can afford wrinkle-free clothes and fabric softener. 

People who lack basic clothing suffer.  They suffer.  They shiver and sicken when cold and wet and muddy.  And dirty clothing spreads disease.  Honest. 

The emotional tolls are high, too: children skip school because not having enough clothes is humiliating.  Other kids make you the butt of jokes:  Aren’t you wearing the same shirt for the third day in a row? I knew you were coming because I could smell you.  

We can help.  We can go through our closets and donate the GOOD clothes we don’t wear.   (Throw away stained, torn, or tacky clothes. Nobody wants trash.)  Remember the 80/20 rule: We wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time.  The rest could clothe the naked.  Didn’t Jesus say to do that?

We could clothe the naked AND enjoy clean closets. 

Time for my whites to go in the dryer.  I’ll fold them with new eyes. 

So today, this is my prayer:

Thank you, God, for clean underpants.  Bless the poor who don’t have any.  Move our hearts to donate good, serviceable clothing to charity and to buy new underpants to donate, too. And maybe to throw in a few dollars more.  To clothe the naked like you said.  And to then appreciate our clean, organized closets. 

This week when I see someone whose clothes are dirty and who smells bad, remind me, Lord, how hard life is for the poor.  And that while I have two dozen pair of clean underpants in my drawer, they may be wearing their underpants inside out because one pair is all they've got.

Amen.

What My Plumbing Problems Reminded Me About What Dr. Helen Raschke Taught Me About Poverty

Our water got turned back on yesterday.  We’d sprung a geyser a week ago, so since then, we’ve only had water for 20 minutes a day, long enough to shower, brush, flush, and fill the bathtubs for future flushes.  We knew we needed new pipes, so after the third plumbing call in as many weeks, I bit the bullet.  We now have all new pipes ($3,904), and although the plumber is an affable fellow, I hope never to see his butt again.

Living without running water for a week made me think about what the late Dr. Helen Raschke taught me about poverty twenty years ago.

Before I met Dr. Raschke, I thought poverty was about having to make instead of buy Christmas presents.  I knew that public schools provided poor children free breakfast and lunch, that Medicaid paid their doctor bills, and that the government subsidized their housing.  I thought that covered everything. 

Boy, did Dr. Helen Raschke open my eyes.  A marriage and family therapist who was led by her profound Episcopal faith, she had established a free legal clinic to assist women in poverty.  She happened to be the wife of my Episcopal priest, Dr. Vern Raschke, which is how I came to know her.

Helen told me, “People who live in chronic poverty are not simply people who lack disposable income.  They are Multiple-Problem People.

 “Multiple-Problem People have physical and mental health problems.  They have employment problems, school problems, legal problems, marriage problems, and problems with their neighbors and families.  They are often illiterate and have learning problems. They lack adequate housing, transportation, child care and health care. 

“They get their water, electricity and gas cut off, and then they can’t afford the deposits to get them on again.  Without power, they can’t use the refrigerator, stove, or microwave, so they use their limited funds to buy junk and fast food until the money runs out.  When the water is cut off, they can’t shower, wash their hair, or even flush the toilet. Think about it.”  

She then explained about the inability to provide for basic needs like deodorant, soap and toothpaste.  And even sanitary napkins.

Then she switched to cultural disadvantages of Multiple Problem People.  “They don’t know things that you and I take for granted: They don’t know that dirty dishes attract vermin, that their child needs a regular bedtime routine, or that they’re never going to win the lottery.”

Then because she knew that I’m an animal lover, she added, “And they don’t know that the dog tied to the tree in the back yard needs fresh food and water every day, much less that he needs to be permanently unchained and running free in a fenced yard, or that he needs shelter, regular veterinary care, and companionship.”

Then she began to explain how the problems interacted to create new problems: For example, if a mother had neither dependable transportation nor a strong social network, those two problems interacted with each other so that she couldn’t even go pick up a bottle of diarrhea medicine for a sick child, who then became sicker and therefore missed a week of school, which convinced the teacher that he was irresponsible, which...

So here am I today taking my running water for granted.  This morning, I washed a week’s worth of clothes and ran the dishwasher.  This afternoon, I relished my shower.  Washing my hair was darn near erotic.  I even gave new puppy Woodrow a warm bath.  And I shouted, “Yee-ha!” when I flushed the toilet. 

All those things I take for granted.  All those things I forget that poor people don’t.  So tonight, this is my prayer:

Oh God who created and then parted the waters, this night provide water for thy children who have none.  Bring thy rains so that the dying dog who is chained to a tree might have a sip to quench his thirst.  This I ask Thee, Lord, in the name of Thy Son who walked upon the water and who turned water into wine.

Amen.