nice

My site is fixed. Fixed because of this guy . We've never met, haven't talked in a year but are blog friends from back in the day. So when I emailed him a blog cry for help he was there and figured it out immediately. Without hesitation. Just like that.

And that's why this place is so good. Even when we aren't here as much as we'd like. Because we are still here.

in the park

Every morning I get up very early and work out with a group of people in a nearby park. It's one of those organized things, where the guy in charge very nicely yells at you to do more run more jump more and you do it because you need to and also because it's fun. I've been doing it for awhile now and the group is friendly enough, companionable in the sense that we are all doing this together.

Two days ago we were on a little run and in a line we passed by a parked car. I see the people in front of me turn their heads as they go and when I pass I see a cat, a pile of blankets, and a kid and I immediately know it means some folks are sleeping in their car.

So I drop out of the line and run over to the car and I see a woman and a few kids and a couple of cats all piled inside. She's nervous when I approach so I talk to her through the window a bit, I tell her what I used to do and that I mean no offense but if they are without a place to stay maybe I can help. So she rolls down her window and we talk a good long while and I promise I'll connect her as soon as I'm done with this jumping around stuff. As it always has, my heart breaks for the kids, especially the one not much older than mine who jumps out of the car to get dressed in the street before school. Her little face is dirty but her smile is bright. They've been living like this since February.

They've been living like this since February.

So I fall back in with the class and there are some whispers, what was that what's going on are those people in their car and I briefly share and I also share that this is what I used to do and do in different ways today. Folks react in a way I am surprised by, they start telling me I am so good for doing this and I get embarrassed and a bit weird because I haven't done anything yet and this family is still in their car and it's awful. Later at work I recount it for my in the business friends and they understand my awkwardness because to them these sorts of interactions are normal and certainly not worth making a big deal over, it's simply what they do.

So today I go back a bit happier, because in the meantime I've connected the family with some housing options but am frustrated because it's going to take a few days. So I bring some food to give to them after class was over but during class others said they've brought food too.

So after class is over I walk over with some food and several others are coming too. So different from yesterday, today we are all gathered around the car, one woman is giving the kids all kinds of food. One of the guys is looking under the engine of the car, another helping load things in the back. There is talk of other ways to help, bringing dinner, clothes, a mechanic. They are inspired to do more.

All of a sudden the littlest girl starts jumping up and down Look mama, water! Look mama, bread! And in that space my heart cracks in half, little girls excited over bread and water is wrong on so many levels it nearly makes me cry. Our new friend looks at all of us, she does start to cry and thanks everyone over and over. She hugs us and we hug her and I promise to get in touch with her tomorrow. I know we'll figure this thing out.

I look at my peers and I see their faces, the generosity and kindness and everything else. I see they are moved by this moment and I am too. What created discomfort yesterday turned into love and action today. Strangers are now friends. It's so easy to do the right thing.

divine intervention

As soon as I hit the curb I knew I'd blown a tire. Shit. Not knowing what else to do I figured I'd try and make it closer to home, but as I'm driving a car is behind me honking. It's behind me and it's honking, honking. I raise my hands as if to say I know I'm driving on a flat tire. It's my choice. But they keep honking and then pulls in front of me and honks some more. So I pull over at random and the car stops in the middle of the street in front of me and for a minute I have to consider if I accidentally hit this car with mine and simply do not remember but in the end I decide I'd broke my tire all on my own so I have no idea what is going on.

Now other cars are honking at her but unconcerned she jumps out of her car, spry as a spring chicken. It's a nun. A nun in her habit is standing in front of me. Dearie, she says. Your tire is flat and your hubcap is way back there. I smile at her and thank her and she waves and jumps back in her car and drives off. I pause for a minute, both because that was really fucking weird and because I have a really flat tire. I am on an unfamiliar street and I have no form of roadside assistance to call.

As I momentarily ponder I hear a voice from on high. Did that nun run into you? the voice says and I look up and there's a dude on a roof, a construction sort of guy doing construction sort of things. I gaze into the brightness of the sun and I start to laugh. Looks like you're changing a tire I say and he laughs. Looks like I am.

He climbs down and takes a look and I tell him that was awfully presumptuous of me but I was momentarily caught off guard by both the tire and the nun. I thought the nun hit you the way she was acting he said and we laughed a bit and he says he's been wanting to change a tire for awhile now so it might as well be mine. So I poke around in the trunk and find a spare but no jack but my Handy Manny has it under control, he pulls a big jack out of his big work truck and does his thing.

I tell him a few times that he's a lifesaver, that I am not quite sure what I would have done especially without a jack and he takes a drag of his cigarette and smiles ah now, you woulda called someone and I figured he's right but him being right there pretty much felt like a million bucks.

When he's done I try and give him $20 and he shushes me and backs away but then leans over conspiratorial like and says but I'll be here all week if you want to come back and bring me some cookies and I laugh cookies? I say. I'd have figured you for a beer guy and now he laughs too, well if you're offering, I suppose I'd like that better. I guess I'm still tripping out on that nun and we say our goodbyes, he climbs back on his roof and I drive away, and tomorrow I'll go back with a six-pack, because when a nun nearly runs you off the road it's good to stop and listen and it's very good to be thankful for the angels that come next.

a sheriff a baby and some pants

I first saw them at the beginning of the week as they wheeled the stroller into the enormous room chilled to the bone. I hear him before I can see him but I'd recognize that sound anywhere. The sound of the newly born.

The parents are ragged and distrustful, but the journey to here no matter how many wrong turns doesn't mean anything to a newborn. We bring them in and start to get them settled when I see the hospital bracelet still on her wrist. How old is he, I ask. 4 days, she says. M is with me and she's antsy, we've been here awhile now and she's finished her various tasks. After a while I tell her it's time for us to go and the mom hears me. She looks up at the baby's father She's not staying. We are the only family staying here. Her eyes dart around the room and she sees what I see, a hundred or so folks from the street milling around and then there's her.

M immediately blurts out we can stay too mommy it'll be fun and in that moment I feel like the worst person ever, I would never want her to stay there all night and yet somehow I've rationalized that it's okay for others, a hypocritical line I've somehow learned how to cross.

Two nights later I return alone, the little family is there again and now the baby has spent half of his life in the streets. It's a complicated situation, one that requires more creativity than usual and so we assembled a team and after about three minutes assessing the situation one of them looks at me with what looks like tears in his eyes. I'm making it my personal goal to have them in a better place by Friday he says. And sometimes the stars align because he does exactly that, even beating his own deadline by a good 24 hours.

Across town I run into another little family, this time a mom and her daughter who's exactly the same age as M. The mom has 1 day left to stall the sheriff from locking her out of her apartment, the clock is ticking and she's desperate and it's not lost on me how young she looks herself. The little girl is sullen, I lean down and ask her if she's hungry and she nods her head. She's having a bad day, her mama says. We've been on the bus so long she had an accident and we don't have a change of clothes. Now I see it, she's not sullen but embarrassed and she will not stand up no matter what. Want me to try and find you some pants I ask and she nods.

While I'm off hunting down little kid pants the mom gets the help she needs and the eviction has been forestalled. She'll have her place for another month and if she follows a few other steps maybe she won't be in this place again next month. We even find some pants. It's moments like this that make the most sense.

Too much cold and too much work has left me sick just as I was supposed to get on a plane. Now I'm home instead of going away and I'm not happy about it but given the week itself it still feels like we've come out ahead and sometimes that's just the way things go.

good things

July was a rough month in the blogosphere, folks getting sick, losing jobs, computers breaking down or people plain not getting along so since August starts today I figured I'd start it off with a list of good things.

Awhile back my lovely Amy introduced me to Donna from TravelMuse and Donna and I got to talking and once we move I'll be doing a bit of writing about kid-friendly foreign travel for her site. TravelMuse is fantastic, you can get inspired and learn about places around the world all at the same time. Needless to say I'm absolutely thrilled to get to be a part of it and Donna and her crew are lovely and worldly and wise.

Kristen is launching Blog the Recession Month with the goal of getting folks to click through readers to actual posts and spread the love because we can use all the love we can get and some folks appreciate the clickthroughs because it helps with paying the bills. If you want to play along she's got pretty little buttons like the one below over at her spot. Or feel free to steal this one. I'm easy like that. Trust me, Kristen is easy too. Heh.


Speaking of recessions, some of the powerful lady bloggers over at MOMocrats are heading to the Democratic National Convention this month and wow, is democracy expensive. We are doing a little fundraiser right now and if you want to contribute in the name of Better Than Mainstream Media political blogging we can use your help. $5, $10, it's all going in support of the MOMocrats and it all helps and we'll soon see these women blogging the truth from inside the bowels of freedom.

When I spoke at BlogHer there was a lot of energy around coming together as a community for good and one way to get involved is by checking out Just Cause It! Alyssa launched a new cause as a result of our panel and everyone is welcome. Wannabe Hippie live-blogged the panel and is still gathering urls from folks who want to be involved in spreading goodness around the net. I'm not sure where that's going yet but it's nice to know it's there and growing.

Lastly, it's time to send me your links for our upcoming Just Post roundtable. So send me the posts you've written or read about social justice or people doing good things in our world and we'll feature them all at the August Just Post Roundtable on the 10th. if this is new to you email me or clickety click on one of the purple buttons to your right. You can send them to girlplustwo@yahoo.com. Everyone is welcome to join us.

Whew. Now that's a lot of good things. Now tell me some of yours.

morning has broken (pt. 4)

I headed back to the site yesterday morning and immediately spotted the mom, sitting up and looking okay. Apparently she was in some sort of distress related to the stressful conditions she's been living with but she and the baby were okay and they sent her back. I speculate as to whether she'd have been released had she had insurance but perhaps all was simply okay. Relieved, we turned to the task at hand, finding a better place for them to live. I had placed a few calls over the weekend and one of them called back a little while later, offering an interview and if they were accepted, a room. A room that others desperately needed too, this family was not the only one. The woman on the other end made a point of explaining that but also listened to their story, the difficult conditions, the baby, the little girl. There was less surprise than compassion, for them or for my pleading, I'd take either one if it helped.

She told me they needed to arrive in a couple hours, if they were late they'd miss their chance and they'd go to the next in line. I frantically called till I found them and knowing the bus was a tricky option for folks who didn't know their way around, negotiated a ride. The beauty of that was the folks who stepped up, a couple of old timers volunteered their battered cars to transport them, one with the family and one with their belongings, a jalopy caravan of strangers meandering across town.

I got a call just after the scheduled time, the woman who set the appointment called to let me know they arrived and then her boss, the one I'd appealed to earlier called me back to let me know they'd been accepted and brought into the warmth of their program with a spanish speaking counselor and an open day care slot for the little girl. Mom needs to rest awhile, we'll take care of her the woman said and I could tell this family moved her as they'd moved me, the simple essence of their need spoke volumes. I gave an inappropriate Whoohoo! Hell Yes Thank you! to a peer that I've mostly sat across from in community meetings, woeing the state of funding and yet for a moment we shared some of the juice, the reason we both are here. That little girl didn't need to be sleeping beside all your bums, she said, hey now, woman, I replied and she laughed and we hung up smiling.

So it's over for us but not for them, their journey is far from done but in our business small victories mean a lot. When I picked M up last night she wanted to go see her new friend but I told her she was gone. Why, she whined, I wanted to play with her again. I remind her this is good news, they are in a better place now and she says that's good mommy, that's good.

perfectly good

I used to throw the best Halloween parties when I was single. A great crowd, a fully decorated house, artistic friends who'd take it over the top. And yet this year the simple joy of watching my hellion fairy go door to door and then sit in wide eyed excitement over her ever growing candy bucket was about the closest thing I've experienced to heaven on earth.

Chani is working on a roundtable called Accentuating the Positive. She's compiling links from anyone who wants to share their own stories of positive interactions and influences so I offered my shared lunch as a perfect example of kindness in unexpected places. Stop by and wish her well - we can all use as many reminders of goodness as we can get.

Also, I'm doing a little nominating of my own - Glennia wrote a brilliant post on poverty this month that spoke volumes about the complicated nature of poverty and why it matters to all of us. It's a must read. And don't forget to check out the rest of the Perfect Posts too.

And lastly, it's that time again. Our Eleventh Just Post Roundtable is coming up so now's the time to forward me links about social justice in all shapes and sizes to girlplustwo(at)yahoodotcom by November 7th. You can send us a post you've written or one you've read which means everyone who wants to can participate. All of the posts will be featured on four blogs in four different parts of the world on the 10th. If this is new to you email me or check out the Just Post buttons to your right. All are welcome.