Photo: Jerry Atnip
Nine-thirty. Below an ink black sky punctured with jewels of light. Ragtop down. Country backroads curve alongside vanishing pastureland connecting another burb with my own. Wearing a brand new pair of Lucky jeans just that afternoon discovered on sale, half price. Blonde curls swirling in a yummy-balmy mid-August temp of 75. Accelerating. In real time with foot to pedal and also chronological toward 50 and yet backwards in my mind's recounting of time. To John Mayer's cranked up yet mellow-voiced tunes, my daughter with autism literally rocks in her seat beside me grounding me to current time and place. But my mind is wandering, wandering years back, navigating the maze of my life from age 25, a quarter of a century ago, to now.
My trip through time and on home was after a photography exhibit featuring Nashville's Tent City, a homeless community beneath interstate bridges. The show had leapfrogged my memory back two decades. I asked the show's photographer, Jerry Atnip, if he intended to create a book of his work. He might, he replied. And I asked him to keep me in mind if he needed a writer. What Jerry, whom I came to know in the three years I worked as an arts reporter for a local magazine and newspaper, did not know was that writing about homelessness is not new to me.
Twenty-five years ago, a lost job here led me to employment in Atlanta from where I traveled North America covering homeless people, rural Appalachia, the poorest Indian reservation in the country and a host of marginalized humanity to which my white-bread upbringing had never exposed me. The immersion of experience transformed me, my politics, my faith. And little did I know that nearly 10 years later I would give birth to a child who would later be diagnosed with autism. Her life would eventually launch me, Real Time, into a world that, once-upon-a-time, I only covered with a pen, pad and a computer.
And so, I am Grateful. I am grateful for the roads that have wound me through land once unexplored and delivered me to where I am now. I am Grateful that I have a car to drive home. That I have a home to drive it to. The night of the exhibit, I had planned to donate a portion of my month's charity-tithe budget to the exhibit's sponsoring church's benevolence fund for Tent City. And so I did. Then I gave a dollar for the homeless newspaper that was given to me. Next, I learned that the woman with whom I talked after the show was one of the homeless residents of Tent City. Standing beside an aide worker, with whom I had also been talking, she told me that she was hoping to have a home soon. That she had been approved and she just had to keep selling newspapers as an official vendor for this publication about homelessness to earn that remaining amount. I asked her how much she needed to make her goal. It was a mere $600. So, I reached in my wallet and shelled out another $20. Between the three donations, I had given half of my week's spending allowance that night. But, I had looked into my little tattered Dave Ramsey envelope marked "extra" earlier that afternoon. And while I didn't think about it at the time I handed the woman that $20. I only remembered the "extra" when I reflected in a moment of slight panic and questioning. Yes, I had a safety net. My donation was meant to be. Of course, I had a safety net.
I didn't think it through before I gave. But it felt good. Even if it sort stung me for a moment. And that is the revolutionary effect of Giving. I Give, someone Receives and then I Get. And there's a component of Gratitude in the revolution. I am Grateful for what I have. I Give. And giving gives back. And I am grateful that I can give.
I am Grateful for my transformative life experiences two-and-a-half decades back that brought me to a place where I am not afraid of diversity. A place that challenged the classism of my upbringing. And a place where I was transformed to know the truth. By helping her, I am helping me. And the journey of transformation did not end at 25. Only recently did I really Get that She and I are One in the same. What I now realize in Real Time, approaching 50, is that: We. Are. All. One. And for that Truth, I am Grateful.
Postscript: I came home from the exhibit and wrote this and two other posts on the exhibit, one from last week and one coming next week. It was the end of the first day of my weekly cash budget cycle. That Friday, my daughter started high school. The fees requests began to pour in and it smarted. Each time I felt the sting of that $41 dollars given, I reminded myself again that I had a safety net. And writing here about this again, I'm reminded of the Christmas dinner I helped serve at the Nashville Rescue Mission several years ago. My current boyfriend, at the time, and I, plus a handful of volunteers were given the task to opening large cans of vegetables. Only, all of our can openers were shot. That's all we had. Two electric and a half-dozen hand-crank kind all dull and not worth a crap. It was hard work opening those cans with shoddy tools. And then I realized what a metaphor for the lives of the people we were serving that day. I winced at my small budget deficit last week, still knowing that it was nothing compared to the lives of that woman or the people of Nashville's Tent City or Tent Cities and other homeless people everywhere.
The female Tent City resident captured by Jerry Atnip, above, is not the woman with whom I spoke.
