But for Fortune
Today, 5:45 am, light from an overcast morning sky outlines the clerestory windows in my spacious, cathedral-ceilinged bedroom. Soft carpeting welcomes my bare feet. I draw the drapes across an eight-foot slider, exposing a private morning deck, birds at the feeder, towering pines as backdrop.
Usually, I don’t really see these details of my world. I’ve grown so accustomed to the scene that it claims only subconscious space in my mind. But today I have new vision; a heightened awareness, a renewed sense of gratitude, a rhythmic gladness in my heart for good fortune. I have a home.
Yesterday, I spent the evening hours with three young single moms and their collective four children. A small group of women volunteers, all moms ourselves, prepared the dinner meal and served it at a long table decked out with a bright purple tablecloth and white vases of carnations.
A high chair and two booster seats pressed close to the purple surface. A nine-months-pregnant mom pressed not so close. Her graceful arms seemed to elongate as she reached for her plate of lasagna, salad, and bread.
We, too, ate at the purple rectangle which graced the large open room of this basement – temporary home to the temporarily homeless. The color purple conspired to close down the very palpable, but invisible, space defining us as separate from them.
This sea of purple brought us together in a certain way, but what really closed the gap and gave us common ground were the children. They gradually warmed and muted the gaping hollowness of the surrounding room, filling it with motion, sound, and purpose. They crossed boundaries beyond their consciousness; accepting any and all adult attention, giving us all reason to connect, to communicate, to encounter eye-to-eye. The differing styles of child care got minimized, and all but disappeared, in our collective spirit of caring for the children.
In the din of tending, befriending, hovering, and sometimes smothering; everyone kept on doing what needed done. Dishes got washed and put away, floors swept and cleaned, foods stored, kids given sink baths, sleeping areas prepared, plans for the week ahead discussed.
Our similarities soon filled the room; our differences took a holiday, once-removed from the budding kinships.
I flashed on Robert Henri’s sentiment, “Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.”
Through my eyes, we were the moving, breathing personification of this truth.