One Year After the Homeless Shelter
Our pets are funny. When our morning alarm goes off, our little cat comes up first, motorboat purr and whiskers announcing her presence as she burrows between us. Our Pomeranian, “Frodo” always waits for the snooze alarm for some reason, but as soon as that goes off, he bounces up and joins in, great big yawning ball of fur, him. At that point, we can either get up or get smothered, and so we crawl out of bed, my wife going off to fix coffee while I shower and get ready for work.
Or at least, that’s how mornings were in March when I was working at the day shelter overseeing the computer lab for the homeless. On Fridays, I taught computer literacy at the Department of Workforce Services. It didn’t pay well but just knowing that I was giving back in some way did my heart good. I had lived among the homeless for almost a year, from late 2018 to August of 2019. I got to know many of them well, and I came to understand the unique struggles they faced apart from those of the general public.
But springtime brought the Coronavirus pandemic, roaring in unwelcome with a terrifying new reality. It cast us all into uncertainty. Many services closed or rolled back, of course, including the computer rooms.
My wife and I are living in a tiny apartment that we were able to get into with a housing voucher for homeless veterans. I was shocked, at…