Added to this is the vicarious trauma I suffer on just about a daily basis as I work with folks still on the street, or as I create new training methods based on the shared stories I have from people I'm working with or hearing about from other outreach workers, case managers and program directors.
Suffice it to say, the reality I deal with every day is often far more riveting, interesting and sometimes painful than anything television might be able to provide me with.
But every now and then, as I'm working away and half-listening to the endless stream of noise emanating from my tv (I have it on from the moment I wake up at 5amish to the time I go to bed around 11pmish) something that's said catches my ear and triggers a listening response.
Such was the case this morning while listening to HBO's Taxicab Confessions program.
What caught my attention was a particular rider who was an African American man and who had such an impressive physique that the cab driver asked him if he "lifted trucks for a living?"
As soon as the man began speaking, I immediately liked the guy. His demeanor was...casual yet upbeat, positive, and he invited approaching in a friendly sort of way. It's a persona I try to wear when I'm in public as well and I guess when I see it in others, it makes me instantly feel connected to the person.
The driver and rider talked a while and the man began to explain to the driver some of the differences between white and black thinking on issues, race, and the reason black men have a difficult time with each other. I found him enlightening and interesting; definitely someone I would have enjoyed spending some time and chatting with.
Now about this time, I also had a couple of other things occurring in good ol real life, so I'm not positive what I'm about to tell you next came from the mouth of the guy I've just described, but I heard someone say (and I'm paraphrasing a bit here), "everything I've got I earned myself. No one gave me anything or did anything for me. I did it all on my own and I had to work hard for it."
Whoever it was that said this created an instantaneous recollection of memories for me that might best be described as watching one's life pass before their eyes right before they die.
I thought about my father, who disappeared from my life at age 4. I thought about my mother, who struggled to raise my sister and me as a single parent in the sixties and who, on her own and with no help from family, entered college, earned the first college degree of anyone in her family, and went on to become moderately successful as a Respiratory Therapist and department head for a major metropolitan hospital in the Philadelphia area. Her career was short-lived however, and when I was just 17, she suffered a cerebral aneurysm that left her hemiplegic and completely disabled for the remainder of her life.
I still vividly remember that day. I was trying to reach her to let her know when I'd be returning and learned from her employer that she'd been admitted to a hospital in Lansing, Michigan, was undergoing emergency surgery, and, according to him, she "may not survive it. " The rotten bastard wouldn't tell me which hospital she was at as he didn't want me to "bother" her, and I remember thinking as I slammed down the phone that if she died before I got a chance to see her, there'd be another death in Lansing that day, and it would be a slow and painful one, for sure.
I was picking apples in November at an orchard in Empire MI trying to earn a few bucks (about the tip of the pinky finger for those who know we Michiganders always show the "mitten" when we're describing our state) at the time and didn't even bother to return to pick up my few belongings from the migrant camp I was holed up in.
I hitchhiked out of Empire in a sleet storm and it took me two days to go from there to Lansing Michigan.
I slept that first night in an over sized dog house on the front lawn of a motel, too broke to afford a room. I was soaking wet and shivering my ass off, and sometime in the middle of the night I got so cold I decided to break into the maintenance room of the motel. I crawled in through a window, stripped down to my boxers and laid my soaked, icy clothes on the duct pipes of the furnace that was pumping heat into the motel rooms.
I caught a few winks in there but was scared shitless that I'd get busted for breaking into the place, and as soon as my clothes were dry, I slapped them on and headed back out onto the highway.
I arrived in Lansing that afternoon, unsure of where my mother was but bound and determined to find her. I located her at Sparrow after calling every hospital in a phone book at a local payphone.
I visited her in intensive care; she was on a ventilator and had what appeared to be a gazillion tubes poking out of every part of her body. Her head was bandaged and I don't think she was conscious, but I do recall her squeezing my hand as if to let me know she knew I was there.
I staggered out of that room a changed young man and for the first time in my entire life, began to wonder about my own survival. It was also the first time I experienced homelessness, since my mother was never going "home" in the sense that she was the homeowner and I was a child in that home, and I really had no place to go to at that point, nor did I have any resources available to me for food, transportation, communication or general survival.
By this point, I'd long since dropped out of school, having left that complete waste of my time at the start of 8th grade, and spent the days as stoned as I could get myself, while trying to deal up enough local cash to run small amounts of dope back and forth from Michigan to Florida. Truth be told I did have some definite dope selling skills but several problems are associated with this "skill set." First - and perhaps the most debilitating to those of us who enjoy consuming the drugs we're supposed to be selling - is that although profits were large, it was easy to smoke, snort and consume the profit margin in an unbelievably short period of time. Second, those skills don't get you very far when you apply for a job in the real world and are still years away from even a high school diploma.
I stumbled along, making bad choices out the ass, and finally, several years later while wandering in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I was told by a cousin that he'd seen my father at a convenience store on Division Avenue in Wyoming, MI. By that time, it'd been some 18 years since I'd last seen my dad and I'd already had a couple of kids myself and was well on my way to my first divorce. I'd moved back to Grand Rapids from a little shithole on the southwest corner of the state after working myself stupid at the world's worst job as a plastic injection mold operator and losing my relationship with my first wife in the process.
Excited at the possibility of rekindling a relationship with a family member I'd not seen since the earth began cooling, and doubly excited that I'd get to find out who my dad really was, I hauled ass over to the store to see if I could find him.
As luck would have it (and in my case, it was usually bad luck and this was no exception), he wasn't there when I entered the store but after a very brief conversation the clerk gave me the impression he knew my dad. I did what I thought was the next best thing and left my father a short note mentioning that I'd come back again to speak with him soon.
A few days later I was driving past the store and noticed the clerk I'd given the note to and an old man playing chess while sitting in front of a window of the store.
I pulled in, got out of my car and saw both men looking at me, then talking rather excitedly between themselves. As I began walking towards the door to the store, I saw the old man rise up, grab a cane and hobble off towards the back of the store. As I reached for the door, the clerk rushed over, locked the door and flipped the open sign over to "closed." He then also hightailed it back to the shadows of the store and I couldn't see either of them any longer.
I walked back to my car, dejected, heartbroken and devastated. My father had contracted polio when he was a child and he walked with a bad limp. Later in his life, he needed a cane, and the man who'd jumped up had also hobbled back to the nether regions of the store while using a cane. I had no doubt whatsoever that this gentleman was indeed my father.
I couldn't have been more than 22 at the time, and any free ride or parental assistance many of my friends got when they looked for a job, needed a car, or tried to figure out what they were going to do with the rest of their lives was pretty much not an option for me.
In fact, I would turn three shades of green with envy when one of my friends or acquaintances would suddenly show up in a new and nice car, pockets full of money while he or she began telling me about how their father was able to "get them in" at one of the high-paying factory jobs in the area. Everyone knew that if you wanted to work for a place like General Motors, Steelcase, or Keeler Brass, you had to have a family member employed there who could put in a good word for you with the HR department. These were the sweet jobs during that time; they paid well, had great benefits and once in it was pretty much a given that so long as you didn't really fuck up your job or your attendance, you could count on the "cradle to grave" employment path. Those jobs were only rarely open to the rest of us poor sods, and when a place like GM actually did do an "open hire" there were so many of us in line to get an application (pre-internet days gone by) that you knew your chances were slim to none that you'd ever even receive a call for an interview, let alone actually land a job.
One other thing that got me pretty pissed off was when someone would complain to me about how their father or parents forced them to tow the line, yet they'd pull up in a nice new car, courtesy of those mean and awful parents, and would have to leave early in to return to the apartment the parents had provided the first, last and security for in order to get up for work the next morning at a cush job, again courtesy of mom or dad.
A quick review of the ol family tree turned up nothing but dead branches and a couple of crab-apples. Clearly, I was relegated to navigating my own course on the path to the American Dream. I gave it hell, no doubt about it, but the steps had me stumbling, falling down repeatedly, and resigning myself to repeatedly picking myself up, brushing myself off and trying the path again.
Trust me, the road to success ain't easy to find without a good GPS, and there ain't a better navigation system in place than to have family members, role models and mentors who've traversed the highways before you and can fill ya in on the good exits and scenic routes to take.
Without them, you're likely to make some seriously wrong turns, take exits that lead you into the very depths of despair and poverty, and wind up on roads filled with potholes the size of McMansions. Don't bother looking for the driveway to your own McMansion on those roads either, because it'll be as out of reach to you as is a credit card, a bank account or a new car loan.I probably made every mistake possible on my road to success. But one thing is damned certain at the present: everything I have today, I have because of my own hard work and lessons learned form the mistakes I made over the last half a century. About the only real break I think I ever received is the one that arrived in the form of the most beautiful woman who took a chance on me, at precisely the right time I needed her to.
This isn't a sniveling, "poor me" lamentation but rather an inspirational call to perseverance to all those folks out there who are doing it alone and who never got the map or tossed it aside because they felt they could do a better job on their own.
Success means different things to different people, but one thing I think that is universal is that achieving whatever your idea of success is can be a damned difficult journey if one is attempting to "go it alone" in today's complex and highly competitive society. The impact of positive role models and mentors cannot be underestimated, nor can the guidance and assistance from well-adjusted families. To be sure, some families are so dysfunctional that any children borne into them are probably better off without their influence, but for those kids lucky enough to have a loving, well-adjusted family around to help guide, nurture and direct them, they have the whole world at their feet and they are probably the luckiest folks on the planet, as well...
